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Thirty-three Years a 
Live Wire 

/ 

Life of John T/Hatfield 

J U 

THE "HOOSIER EVANGELIST* 



BY HIMSELF 



Address: Charlottesville, Indiana 



GOD'S REVIVALIST OFFICE 

RINGGOLD. YOUNG AND CHANNING STREETS 

CINCINNATI, OHIO 



3V37SS 



Copyright 1913, by God's Revivalist Office. 



DEC 29 1913 






:i.A358925 



B J 

i T 

INTRODUCTION. 

To the People of America That Love Something 
Hot and Full of Life: 

Well, here it is ; it is the life of the Rev. John 
T. Hatfield. He stands to-day the most peculiar 
man that walks the dirt; there is but one John 
Hatfield on the face of the whole earth. Many 
of you know Brother Hatfield through the press, 
and many of you know him personally, but to 
the millions that have not had the blessed privi- 
lege of seeing him face to face, I want to intro- 
duce you to him through this book. 

To know John Hatfield is to love him, and to 
love a man makes one Christlike. I would love 
to tell you just a little bit about Brother John, 
but there is not a man that lives that can describe 
John Hatfield; he is indescribable, you never 
know just what he is going to do next. We talk 
of men being full of fire — well, that is John Hat- 
field; we talk of life and energy — well, that is 
Brother John. I am willing to just take down 

iii 



iv Introduction. 

my sign when it comes to doing things, I am 
not in it at all. John Hatfield can preach longer 
and louder, and keep at it longer, and shout 
more, and jump higher, and get more people to 
the altar, and pray longer and harder, than any 
man that walks on the ground. 

He is the only man that I ever saw that 
could run a six-o'clock prayer-meeting on a 
camp-ground. I have seen many others try to 
get something done, but, brother, there is noth- 
ing on earth like the six-o'clock prayer-meetings 
that John Hatfield runs. Other things that I 
have seen look tame when we compare them to 
one of his prayer-meetings; he seems to never 
tire or wear out, but is always full of juice and 
freshness and fire and glory. Brother John 
never runs a meeting by a program; he is as 
liable to call mourners at the opening of his ser- 
vice as to call them at the close of his service. 
He is one of the greatest puzzles to the devil that 
is now living; the devil never knows what he is 
going to do next; he is about as liable to preach 
in one end of the church as the other — no strings 
on that man ! 

He is a cyclone of grace turned loose on the 
hills of the earth to do just as the blessed Holy 
Ghost suggests to him. 



Introduction. v 

Now, it will be impossible for all the people 
of this country to hear this mighty man of God, 
but there is a way in which you can hear him, 
you can all buy one of his books, and that will 
be the next best thing for you to do, for as you 
can't hear him you can get a glimpse of him 
through the book that you can't get any other 
way. When you read the book you will see John 
Hatfield on the firing-line, with his guns loaded 
and his finger on the trigger, and when he shoots 
he gets game He always shoots to kill, and he 
puts in old plow-points and ham-irons and old 
log-chains. Folks, there is something a-going 
on when John Hatfield gets to town. He doesn't 
wait a month to see if anything is going to hap- 
pen, he just opens fire and the thing is happening 
right now. If you miss one of the books, you 
have missed your chance. Whatever you do or 
do not do, get one of these books. 

Bud Robinson. 



CONTENTS 

Frontispiece Cut of Author 

Introduction iii 

Preface xi 

CHAPTER I. 

Boyhood Experiences 13 

CHAPTER II. 
Conversion • 22 

CHAPTER III. 
Sanctification 31 

CHAPTER IV. 
What My Consecration Involved 41 

CHAPTER V. 
Three Marvelous Anointings 49 

CHAPTER VI. 
Using An Unexpected Opportunity 58 

CHAPTER VII. 

An Unwelcome Guest • • 64 

CHAPTER VIII. 
First Revival and First Camp-meeting 71 

CHAPTER IX. 

Forcing My Way — Predicament of a Holiness- 
fighter— A Sudden Death 81 

vii 



viii Contents. 

CHAPTER X. 
Dragged through the Snow by An Infidel — Another 

Unusual Circumstances 89 

CHAPTER XI. 

Irate Class-leader Subdued by a Drunkard 97 

CHAPTER XII. 

A Noisy Service 102 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Drastic Measures 109 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Humorous Happenings 115 

CHAPTER XV. 

Experiences Both Humorous and Pathetic 121 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Simple, Trusting Faith and Its Fruits 128 

CHAPTER XVII. 

A Dangerous "Woman — Another Hard Case 134 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Narrow Escape from a Thrashing 139 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Three "Wonderful Cases of Divine Healing 145 

CHAPTER XX. 

Exposing Satan's Subtle Snares 155 

CHAPTER XXI. 

How An Entire Family of Seven Were Saved — A 

Faithful Elder's Reward 163 



Contents. ix 

CHAPTER XXII. 

How a Backslidden Local Preacher Was Moved to 

Pray — A Monkey Service 168 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Obeying Providential Impressions 174 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Drawing the Bow at a Venture, but Hitting the 

Mark Each Time 190 

CHAPTER XXV. 
How the Devil Hates a Holiness Meeting 198 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
Getting in the Brush 203 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
A Mysterious Sermon — Burying An Old Quaker . . 210 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Tobacco-soaked Class-leaders Rebuked 215 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
Strange Leadings and Impressions 221 

CHAPTER XXX. 
Entertainment, and Incidents 231 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Obeying the Spirit— How I Got the Title of the 

"Hoosier Evangelist" 239 



x Contents. 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Reports of Meetings to My County Paper — In 

Boston Among the Bean-eaters 244 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Feathers for Sharp Arrows — Two Meetings, One in 

Indiana and the Other in Illinois 254 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma — Sinners, Kickers, 

and Good People 261 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

In the South — Tobacco, Negroes, and Church Kick- 
ers 267 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

More about the South — Politics, Religion, and 

People 276 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 
More about the Southland 291 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
Across the Rockies 298 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

More about the Rockies 305 

CHAPTER XL. 
Short Sketches of Some Meetings 315 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



After many years of travel over this country 
and in Canada, from ocean to ocean, and from 
Gulf to the Great Lakes, often telling my experi- 
ence and the thrilling adventures of my life, my 
friends would often say to me that I should 
write a history of my life, and put it in 
book form, so that more people could get 
the benefit of it ; they felt that it would be a bless- 
ing to any one who would read it. At last I 
consented to do so. After twenty-five years had 
passed away, when I had completed the manu- 
script, I sat down to read it over and make what 
corrections were necessary, and it seemed to have 
so much self in it that I threw it into the waste- 
basket, and refused to publish it. A few months 
later I met Rev. John C. Patty in a camp-meeting 
as my co-worker, who insisted on my publishing 
the book, and if my conscience would not let 
me write it myself he would write it for me, and 
take the "I" out, so I consented to let him do so, 

xi 



xii Preface:. 

and the book was published entitled "Twenty- 
five Years on the Firing-line." But my friends 
thought I should have written it myself. Not 
but what Brother Patty had done justice in writ- 
ing the book, but they thought it should be in 
my own dialect. As time passed on I felt more 
and more that it was the will of the Lord that 
I should be the author of the book myself, and 
after the third edition had been published I was 
convinced that I must rewrite it myself. Thirty- 
three years have passed away since my first be- 
ginning in this work. I have kept no diary, all 
I have is what I have retained in my memory, 
therefore, for me to go back for a third of a 
century and give everything in perfect detail 
would be impossible, but I have the substance. 
So you have it as it now comes from my own 
pen, and I dedicate it to all of God's dear saints 
in the world. 

John Thomas Hatfieux 



CHAPTER I. 
Boyhood Experiences. 

On the eighth day of August, 1851, in the 
woods, in a little frame house, near Cleveland, 
Ind., I was privileged to look out on this old 
world for the first time. I will acknowledge that 
my eyesight was not very good. I would not 
have known my mother if I had depended upon 
that, but my sense of smell let me know who she 
was, and find the place where I could get a square 
meal at all hours in the day or night; and I did 
not have to read a long bill of fare in French to 
find out what I wanted, and figure up the price 
it would cost, and then when I was done have 
the waiter to stand and look at me with a wishful 
eye for a tip. I have no recollection what my 
thoughts were at this time, but I am very certain 
that I was not bothering myself much about 
preaching the Gospel. 

My boyhood days abounded with daring and 
mischievous exploits. One who would see me 

13 



14 Thirty-threes Years a Live Wire. 

now would scarcely believe that I possessed such 
characteristics in my early life. In those days I 
delighted to stand upon a railroad track and 
laugh at the engineer of an on-coming train, as 
he frantically jerked the whistle cord warn- 
ing me to clear the way, and this I would tantal- 
izingly refuse to heed until the engine was almost 
upon me ; and when the engine passed* me I was 
sure to get all the benefit of the force pump 
until I would be dripping with water. 

It was a luxury for me to break wild colts to 
ride, and young calves to the yoke. The uglier 
the disposition of the animal, the greater pleas- 
ure it afforded me in subduing it. One time my 
mother sent me up to the little village to get 
some jugs to put up some maple molasses. I 
rode one of these fiery steeds. And when I had 
gotten all the jugs in the town, and had both 
hands full, and was riding back without holding 
to the rein, I saw a cow in the road and spurred 
up the colt for a run. The crazy cow turned 
across the road, the horse struck the cow and 
knocked her down, the horse fell over the cow 
and threw me off and broke all my jugs, the cow 
bawled, the horse snorted, and I — said some- 
thing ! When fog and dust cleared away the cow 
was gone, the horse providentially was standing 



Boyhood Experiences. 15 

in the road, and I was lying on my back with 
one foot in the stirrup; but I was soon on the 
horse again and on my way home. My mother 
asked me why I didn't get the jugs. I told her 
there was not a jug in the town. 

One Sunday afternoon, while out with a com- 
pany of young people, some one dared me to leap 
from a high precipice down into the quicksand 
below. Instantly, regardless either of the danger 
of losing my life or of ruining a fine suit of 
clothes, away I leaped, and had it not been for 
the heroic efforts of the other boys in the com- 
pany, the treacherous sand might have swal- 
lowed me up, and that would have been "good- 
bye, John. ,, But the good Lord had His eye on 
me and I was spared. 

At school one day a young lady fashioned a 
hat out of burdock burrs and presented it to me ; 
without a second thought, I slapped that burr hat 
tightly down upon my head. There was only 
one way to remove the hat and that was with a 
pair of scissors, and I went home from school 
that day with much less hair than I came with. 
I was nearly peeled on top of the head, but I still 
retained a fringe of long hair around the edge. 

Once when I was fooling with a knife in a 
cutting-box, I put my fingers in just a little too 



1 6 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

far, and to this day I carry an ugly scar as a 
memento of the occasion. 

I was a natural imitator. I spent much time 
in the practice of gymnastics. One time while 
attending a show I carefully observed and lis- 
tened to all that was said and done. When I 
arrived at my home my brother and I were talk- 
ing about the performance at the show and we 
declared that we could do many things that they 
did ; so we proceeded to the back yard to put the 
thing to the test, as a proof of the matter and 
make good our boast. Sure enough, we suc- 
ceeded in many things, but there was one thing 
that remained that was an unsolvable mystery to 
us both, and that was to touch off a steel trap 
with your nose. I declared I could do it, and my 
brother dared me to try it. This was all that was 
necessary to start me in search of a steel trap, 
which I soon found, and, after practicing awhile 
with a stick, then with my finger, I felt confident 
that there would be no risk in making the ven- 
ture, and declared my readiness to touch it off 
with my nose. Alas the day! I touched it off, 
and it touched me off, and I was instantly re- 
minded that that trap was rewarded with a vision 
of a thousand stars, the Milky Way turned to 
crimson, and the revolving of old Mother Earth 



Boyhood Experiences. 17 

upon her axis at a swifter rate than I had ever 
been led to believe from my study of geography. 
Diagnosis revealed that my face was skinned 
from my cheek bone, and my nose had been 
mashed between the jaws of the trap. In my 
agony I danced around as if I were in the midst 
of a yellow jacket's nest, crying out between my 
screams to my brother, "Take it off, take it off, 
take it off !" By this time my brother was almost 
frantic with laughter. He stood upon his head, 
walked upon his hands, turned handsprings and 
somersaults, and laughed until he cried at last. 
When my brother's hilarity had somewhat 
abated, he undertook to relieve me from the trap, 
but he was so full of laughter he could not grip 
the spring, and I was so full of pain I was help- 
less to do the same, so I found it necessary for 
me to stand on my head while my brother put 
his foot on the trap. It lacked a little of coming 
to the ground, and when he pressed his foot upon 
the trap I thought in my soul my nose was com- 
ing off, but thank God! I felt the jaws release 
and I pulled my bloody nose out. I looked at my 
brother with tears streaming from my eyes, and 
blood from the end of my nose, and said, "I did 
it," but I have never had any desire from that 



1 8 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

day until this to repeat it. In that case, the first 
blessing was enough for me. 

From 1858 to 1862, my father was the treas- 
urer of the county and we lived in the city of 
Greenfield, Ind. During the times of vacation, 
when there was no school, my mother would 
often send me to the country to stay with my 
aunt, that I might be kept out of mischief; but 
it was in me, and it would crop out in«the country 
as well as in town. 

I remember how my aunt used to break water 
in a big iron kettle to wash with. She would put 
in a bucket of ashes, then fill the kettle with 
water, and when it would clear up she would dip 
off the water and use it on the clothes. One 
washday I saw her fix the kettle and pour the 
water in, then go into the house to let it settle. 
There was a thought that struck my brain; just 
about the time it got 'settled I slipped from be- 
hind the old granary and jumped into it with my 
bare feet and "riled" it up. My aunt took after 
me, but I ran for the orchard and she could not 
catch me. I did this several times; by and by 
my aunt got "riled"; she warned me each time 
of a good "licking," but I could always beat her 
over the fence to the orchard. But at last she 
had a big gad and laid for me, and just about the 



Boyhood Experiences. 19 

time I was in the midst of my mischief she was 
on me with that gad. I thought she would cut 
me in two every step I took, and as I went over 
the fence into the orchard, from the way she 
pulled that switch over me I thought sure I would 
drop on both sides of the fence ; but I escaped 
the division and ' went out under an apple-tree 
and tried to choke myself to death to make her 
feel bad; but I survived the effort and was on 
decfe and ready for something else the next day. 

I saw a man once go up in a balloon and come 
down in a parachute. That was a new proposi- 
tion to me, but I soon made up my mind that if 
I could only get up I had a way of coming down ; 
so I made up my mind I would give it a trial. I 
stole the old umbrella out from the wardrobe and 
slipped around and climbed upon the back part 
of the house, and, finding the highest place, I 
spread the umbrella, gripped the handle tight, 
and then made a leap. Instantly my parachute 
turned inside out, and I went to the ground like 
a chunk of lead ; but God had His hand upon me 
and He let me down in a soft place, and I escaped 
with but little injury. 

James Whitcomb Riley and myself were boys 
together. We were in the same class at school, 
and at the same "swimming hole," since made 



20 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

famous in one of Mr. Riley's poems. During the 
Civil War we marched the streets together with 
tin pans for drums and broomsticks for guns. 
Little did passers-by imagine, as they cast indif- 
ferent glances at us little dust-begrimed urchins 
out in the road playing soldier, that, in the com- 
ing years, little Johnnie Hatfield would bless his 
country as John T. Hatfield, "The Hoosier Evan- 
gelist," and little Jim Riley would be known the 
world over as James Whitcomb Riley, "The Hoo- 
sier Poet. ,, 

My parents were unsaved members of the M. 
E. Church. They knew nothing, experimentally, 
of belonging to the glorious Church "without 
spot or wrinkle." Our home was the stopping- 
place for Methodist preachers, and yet no min- 
ister ever deliberately thrust arrows of convicting 
truth into their hearts sufficiently straight and 
true to awaken them out of their long sleep in 
carnal security. There were three reasons why 
I liked for these ministers to come to my father's 
house. First, I was quite sure they would not 
talk to me about my soul's salvation; second, I 
was very sure I would hear many tales of daring 
adventure; third, I knew my mother would put 
forth special effort to prepare appetizing dishes 
to appeal to the ministerial palate. 



Boyhood Experiences. 21 

My father, in those days, frequently kept a 
bottle of "Old Kentucky Rye" in the cupboard, 
and its contents were offered to both children 
and guests. This custom of the home had some- 
thing to do in kindling to great intensity my 
appetite for strong drink, and at the age of 
twenty years I was frequenting saloons and seek- 
ing companionship among the vile, soul-destroy- 
ing influence of saloon life. Like a meteor in the 
night I was fast going down, and nothing less 
powerful than the mighty attraction of heavenly 
gravitation could reverse my hellward course and 
draw me to the heights of noble Christian man- 
hood. Thank God, the Holy Spirit interposed, 
the blood of Christ was supplied, and my 
young life was transformed from a disgraceful 
career of drunken profligacy to one of eminent 
usefulness in the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ 



CHAPTER II: 
Conversion, 

It was the night of December 14, 1872. Many 
days and nights have come and gone and long 
since been forgotten, but this night is one that 
lingers in my memory as one of the greatest 
nights of all my past experience; because of the 
eternal issues that I settled on my knees in that 
little upper room over my father's store. At this 
time I was living at Knightstown, Ind., and was 
clerking in a dry-goods store for my father. 

For quite awhile it had been my custom to 
spend the evenings out with the town boys, en- 
joying with them the pleasures of sin, but on the 
night of December 14, for what cause God only 
knows, I remained at the store and retired at an 
early hour. After retiring I quickly fell asleep, 
only to be soon awakened by the heavy pressure 
of God's hand upon my breast. I found myself 
awakened for the transaction of the most impor- 
tant business project of my life, and the Holy 
Spirit, God's agent in the deal, put a religious 

22 



Conversion. 23 

question in my mind that made me so intensely 
conscious of my lost state that I felt that I must 
do something toward the salvation of my soul, 
and do it quickly. Hoping to receive salvation 
without any one else knowing it, I began praying 
in a quiet way, but the sound of my voice plunged 
me into a paroxysm of excitement. I sprang out 
of bed screaming "Murder ! Murder ! Murder ! 
I'm dying! I'm dying! Fm dying !" My uncle, 
who was sleeping with me, thinking I was hav- 
ing a fearful dream, sprang from the bed and 
took hold of me, but I informed him that I was 
not asleep, but I was dying, and could see Hell 
and every sin I ever committed pass before me 
like a dark, fearful panorama. 

I wanted salvation, but was almost sure I 
would die ere I obtained it. I wanted the doctor, 
and I wanted the preacher, and I could not deter- 
mine which I wanted first. I was afraid to send 
for the doctor first for fear I would die without 
the preacher, and I was afraid to send for the 
preacher for fear I would die without the doctor. 
At last I thought of a doctor who was a local 
preacher, and sent for him and got the two in 
one. When my uncle left me alone, as he hurried 
for the doctor, I became almost wild with fear; 
I imagined I saw Hell-fire beneath me, all the 



24 Thirty-thre:^ Ysars a Live Wire:. 

sins of my life before me, and the devil after me 
right at my heels. My breast felt as though it 
would burst. My heart throbbed and beat like a 
drum, the sweat stood on my forehead in great 
drops and my hands were as cold as ice. I wan- 
dered into a back room where the carpets were 
kept ; it was dark. Many of the rolls were lying 
on the floor, as it had been a busy day and they 
were left lying. I stumbled over some of these 
rolls and I imagined myself falling into Hell. 

When my uncle and the doctor arrived, they 
found me in a corner of the room with my head 
against the wall, the tears streaming from my 
eyes, my body wet with perspiration and my 
breast heaving. As soon as the doctor saw me 
he soon had my case diagnosed; the symptoms 
were so marked that it did not take him long to 
locate the trouble, and he apprised me of the fact 
that my suffering was caused from a very malig- 
nant form of sin-sickness, and prescribed prayer 
and confession for my sins and faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ. He had no trouble in getting me to 
follow the prescription and take my medicine. 
There was nothing that savored of hope that was 
too hard for me to do. I was glad to confess all, 
to make restitution, to say "yes" to any field of 
labor. I spent about six hours on my knees, and 



Conversion. 25 

they were hours of as great anxiety as I ever 
spent on this earth, and they are fresh in my 
memory to-day, and when I get to Heaven I will 
look down and sing that old song: 

" There is a spot to me more dear 

Than native vale or mountain ; 
A spot for which affection's tear 

Springs grateful from its fountain. 
'Tis not where kindred souls abound, 

Tho ' that is almost Heaven, 
But where I first my Savior found, 

And felt my sins forgiven. 

'"Hard was my toil to reach the shore, 

Long tossed upon the ocean; 
Above me was the thunder's roar, 

Beneath, the waves' commotion. 
Darkly the pall of night was thrown 

Around me, faint with terror; 
In that dark hour how did my groan 

Ascend for years of error. 

'Sinking and panting as for breath, 

I knew not help was near me, 
I cried, 'Oh, save me, Lord, from death, 

Immortal Jesus, hear me/ 
Then quick as* though I felt Him mine, 

My Savior stood before me, 
I saw His brightness round me shine, 

And shouted 'Glory! Glory!' 



26 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

"Oh, sacred hour! Oh, hallowed spot! 

Where love divine first found me: 
Wherever falls my distant lot, 

My heart shall linger round thee. 
And when from earth I rise, to soar 

Up to my home in Heaven, 
Down will I cast my eyes once more, 

Where I was first forgiven." 

While I was gasping and choking for breath, 
I thought I had thrown up my heart, and I 
opened my eyes and looked at the floor to see if 
it could be possible. I fully expected to fall to 
the floor, a dead man, and drop directly into Hell 
and be utterly lost forever. I was unconsciously 
clinging to life and was not aware of it, and noth- 
ing but physical exhaustion could solve tb~ diffi- 
culty; and when I reached the point of human 
weakness my head dropped upon my heaving 
breast, my voice ceased to give utterance to the 
cries of my soul. I reached the place of complete 
surrender, the struggling ceased, and I said; 
"Live or die, I am the Lord's/' then looked up, 
and, by simple faith, I claimed the promise, and 
the light of Heaven flashed instantly in upon my 
soul, the burden rolled away, new life sprang up 
within, angels struck their golden harps and 
broke forth with rejoicing. The heavenly melo- 
dies burst upon my soul, and I was as light and 



Conversion. 27 

free and happy as a bird in springtime. I 
sprang to my feet fairly submerged in the billows 
of glory that swept over my new-born soul. 

The next morning, when I reached the store, 
I found my uncle telling the clerks the circum- 
stances of the past night, and although he was a 
well-known but unconverted member of the 
Methodist Church, he did not take well to such a 
radical experience of salvation. He had gotten 
into a very close place during the past night, in 
having to perform the laborious task of praying 
for a poor lost soul, and when a cold professor 
is not accustomed to such herculean tasks, it 
makes it quite uncomfortable for old carnality. 

I passed down the aisle to the front of the 
store where a lady was entering to purchase some 
goods. She also was a Methodist, and so deaf 
that she could not hear it thunder if it would 
strike the house. I was so happy I could scarcely 
hold myself to the floor. It seemed to me that 
gravitation was reversed, it was pulling me up 
instead of down. While measuring some dress 
goods the lady was purchasing, I was busy tell- 
ing her my experience and talking very loud, 
when suddenly a wave of glory swept over me 
like a hot wind in Kansas, and with an old-fash- 
ioned shout I threw the yardstick and goods to 



28 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

one side and took down the aisle clapping my 
hands and shouting for dear life. This was more 
than my Methodist uncle could endure. He soon 
had a buggy at the front door with a driver in 
it to escort me to the farm where my father lived, 
and if I" wanted to shout I could stay out there 
and shout in the woods with the birds. Nothing 
could have suited me better. I wanted room and 
liberty, and from the way I was feeling, that 
store was entirely too small to contain all God 
had put in my soul. Away I went, shouting 
every step of the way. 

Immediately I went to work for Christ in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. I organized a 
Sunday-school, began to teach music, a thing I 
had never done before in my life, there was no 
music in me, but God put a new song in my 
mouth, and I began to try to sing at once. I was 
soon appointed class-leader of the church, and in 
this capacity I served the church for a number 
of years, and God was with me. I lived what 
they called a very consistent justified life and 
was faithful in attendance upon all the means of 
grace. I often lost control of my temper and 
gave way to the spirit of impatience, and there- 
fore brought darkness upon my soul; but I al- 
ways persisted in storming the throne of grace 



Conversion. 29 

until God forgave me and sent the fresh anoint- 
ings upon my soul and thus dispelled the gloom. 

I might say that before my conversion I tried 
to reform myself by joining the "Good Temp- 
lars," but it was a failure. My appetite was too 
strong and my will was too weak. 

At another time, during a big revival in the 
Methodist Church in 1869, I went forward with 
others, and for two nights I worked as hard as 
any one to get saved. At last some one asked 
me if I believed. I told them I did. Then they 
said, "Get up, you are saved." I was sincere, so 
I accepted their teaching and stood up, but I felt 
no particular change, as my head h"ng down and 
I felt ashamed; but I took their word for it, sup- 
posing it to be all right. But, oh, what a mistake ! 
and that same mistake is being made with, thou- 
sands to-day. The country is full of what we 
called backsliders that never had anything to 
backslide from, and this deception has made their 
last state worse than the first. 

I was taken into the Church and baptized, but 
it did me no good. I was worse than ever, and 
for three years I lived a very wicked life. But 
thank God! on the 14th day of December, 1872, 
God Almighty got hold of me, and this time He 
was the teacher, and He showed me a thing or 



30 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

two, and like Jacob of old, He nearly used me 
up, but I got something as lasting as the stars, 
and which will stand when the world is on fire. 
No human being has ever told me to get up since 
that load of sin rolled away, and the fire of God 
struck my soul. You might as well have tried to 
stop old Vesuvius with corncobs as to have tried 
to hold me down then; there was something in- 
ternal in me that was bringing me up, and my 
head was not hung, and I was not bashful about 
it. Glory to God ! That has been over forty years 
ago and the fire still burns hot. Hallelujah! 



CHAPTER III. 

Sanctification. 

For eight years I battled along against that 
subtle enemy of the human heart, known as in- 
bred sin. During these years I heard not a word 
on the possibility of deliverance from this inward 
foe. One day my pastor, Rev. James Leonard, 
attended a Holiness camp-meeting at Hartford 
City, Ind., conducted by the National Holiness 
Association, and in this meeting he professed to 
have obtained the blessing of entire sanctifica- 
tion. When he returned he was not the same 
preacher, and his sermons were not the same. 
He had something new, and there was fire in it, 
and you could feel it burn. His theme was holi- 
ness as a second definite cleansing work of God's 
grace, and it made me feel very uncomfortable 
to sit there and listen to him. He soon had me 
v on the fence, and he had me guessing, but still I 
was interested. I knew I needed something, and 
he seemed to have the thing my poor, hungry 
heart was craving. At last I became very deeply 

3i 



32 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

convicted for it, and told my wife that I was go- 
ing to have that experience or die seeking it. Im- 
mediately I began to seek the blessing, and often 
in my prayers I would become so fervent and 
intense that I would receive great spiritual en- 
duements, and at times I often wondered if I had 
truly been sanctified wholly; but when I came to 
dealing with things about the farm, I would be- 
come impatient and lose my temper, and this was 
a clear evidence to me that I did not have it. I 
spent much time in prayer seeking this blessing. 
In the woods, in the field, at the barn, at family 
prayer, in church, at Sunday-school, in the class 
meeting and in prayer-meetings I could pray 
down fire and wonderful blessings upon my soul, 
but nothing that would remove inbred sin. 

I was walking in all the light I had, I was not 
under condemnation, but I had an intense hun- 
gering and thirsting for a clean heart; yet the 
secret of how to obtain it had never been revealed 
to me. I was persistent and held on like a dog 
at a root, but I would have my spells of fits and 
starts. I remember once of hearing Bro. C. W. 
Ruth say, "Forty fits to one start/' but that did 
not apply .to me, for I never allowed but one fit 
until I took a start. I always took my pain-killer 
(repentance) after I had my fit. 



Sanctification. 33 

Before I received this "second blessing," one 
evening my wife and I went out to set a hen ; we 
had to move the hen from her nest to a more 
desirable location. My wife placed the eggs in 
the nest while I held the hen, which, when all was 
ready, I very gently placed upon the eggs, then 
quietly withdrew my hand and up came the hen. 
I gently placed her back again, and again she 
arose, so I put her back again (only not quite so 
gently as before), and again she arose to her 
feet. I set her down this time with more author- 
ity, and the way I stuck my fingers into* her old 
back and ribs was enough to give her to under- 
stand that there was something going to happen, 
but the end was not yet. By this time my wife 
was getting a little anxious, for she knew the 
fellow that was handling the hen. We had al- 
ready broken some eggs, but the hen still, with 
all past experiences, refused to set, and I was 
determined that she should, and so we had it, and 
before we got through that hen was well-nigh 
picked, and feathers and broken eggs were the 
fragments that covered that battlefield; but that 
poor old hen, where ! oh, where ! was she ? "Ask 
of the moon." This was very clear that I did not 
have the second blessing, and I was very much 
in need of another dose of pain-killer. 



34 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

At another time my wife and I went out to the 
barn to teach a young calf to drink out of a 
bucket. We went into the stall where the young 
calf was and I caught the calf and was very 
gentle with it; I put my fingers in its mouth and 
tried to coax it to put its nose in the bucket, but 
instead it would stick its nose in the air. With 
much effort I succeeded in getting its nose in the 
bucket, and giving it a taste of the milk; this 
made it frantic, it went wild, it pranced and 
jumped around, and stood on both hind legs. 
Presently I began to talk pretty loud to my wife, 
telling her first to hold the bucket up and then 
hold it down. At last, every other expedient un- 
availing, I leaped a-straddle of that calf, grabbed 
it by both ears and downed its head in milk up 
to its eyes. It suddenly gave one big lurch which 
upset my wife, spilled the milk, threw mc over 
its head, and we all went in one pile together. 
I never thought to help my wife up, I was busy 
in helping that calf out of that stall with my foot, 
threatening to kill it, but it survived the treat- 
ment and was ready for its milk at the next meal. 
This was again very clear that I had not received 
the second blessing and the calf had gotten the 
first. 

I often said that it took my wife too long to 



Sanctification. 35 

get ready for church on Sunday morning. In- 
variably I found it necessary to wait for her, 
until at last, one Sunday morning, while she was 
pressing me to bring on the buggy that she would 
be ready to go, I said, "I will have the team here, 
but if you are not ready when I drive to the door, 
I will drive off and leave you," and sure enough 
she still had the old failing; she had to go back 
in the house after something, but when she came 
out I was gone, and was soon at the church. I 
took my usual place in the front seat, and pres- 
ently my wife came in and took a seat by my 
side. You would never have known anything 
had happened by looking at her, for she was as 
calm as a May morning and as patient as a jug 
of molasses under a kitchen table; but to have 
seen me you would have seen a different picture. 
I had a guilty conscience, the sermon didn't do 
me much good, I was bothered with other reflec- 
tions. 

\ After the sermon (fortunately the pastor did 
not call on me to pray), my wife and I got in the 
buggy and started for home ; I felt guilty, mean, 
little and wretched. I could endure it no longer, 
so I said, "Amanda, that was a mean trick in me 
this morning to make you walk to church ; I want 
you to forgive me." She knew my weakness and 



36 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

it was willingly done; she very well knew that I 
could no more keep the "old man" down than I 
could keep down a sick stomach. I just felt that 
for that one act I would like to have her take me 
in the parlor and pull every hair out of my head, 
but that would not be like her ; she had a differ- 
ent disposition. Her even Christian life was a 
source of conviction to me for years. I never 
saw her excited, impatient, scared or lose her 
temper in all our thirty-eight years of married 
life, and she did not profess to be sanctified 
wholly. She possessed the characteristics before 
she was converted, and I still displayed mine, 
after I was converted. I needed the second bless- 
ing, and that was what I was seeking. 

The night before I received this sanctifying 
work of grace in my heart, while working in a 
revival in my home church, I received such a 
wonderful blessing that I ran all about the 
church shouting and praising the Lord, and yet, 
when I went to milk my cow, because she did 
not stand to suit me, we got into a scrap, and I 
lost my temper, as well as a bucket of milk. I 
got the milk all over me and the cow got the 
bucket all over her; the "old man" within, and 
the devil without; so, as a case of necessity, I 
was compelled to take another dose of pain-killer, 



Sancti^ication. 37 

but by the time for the service that night I had 
gotten relief, and was ready for another meeting. 
The Lord was good to me, He greatly blessed 
me in my soul, and gave me great liberty in 
working in the congregation and leading sinners 
to the altar to seek the Lord. 

I never felt the need of a clean heart, and 
full deliverance from an evil temper so much in 
all my life as during this night's service. It was 
intense. My pastor called on me to lead in 
prayer. The altar was full of weeping sinners. 
I began to pray for them, but soon my prayers 
were turned to praying for myself. How often 
had I prayed for a clean heart, and how often 
had I been blessed in praying for it, but the "old 
man" still remained ; but this time, by the aid of 
the Spirit, I was given the key to the situation. 
Heretofore I had been praying myself up into 
blessings without exercising any faith, but when 
I reached the place where I said, "Lord, I do 
believe/' instantly the fire fell, and I knew the 
work was done. The "old man" was killed, and 
I have never seen him since, and that has been 
more than thirty years ago. 

I bad passed through six months of desperate 
Struggle amidst many a cheering hope and many 
a blasting fear, but, thank God ! I knew I had the 



38 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

blessing this time. From my knees I looked 
across at my pastor and said, "Brother, I've got 
it," and he said, "Got what?" I said, "I have 
been sanctified wholly." Some of our people in 
the church were very anxious for me to get the 
blessing, for they said they were getting t tired of 
hearing me pray for it. No doubt they were, it 
was putting conviction on them. I did not have 
it many hours until they were wishing that I 
had not gotten it. 

It was not long until I had a splendid chance 
to tell whether or not I had the blessing. I con- 
sidered my cow a bad one to milk, and I suppose 
the cow considered me a bad one to milk her. It 
was sometimes hard to tell which was worst, 
me or the cow, for while the cow threw hoofs 
and horns and milk and bucket, I was not slow 
in keeping myself busy playing the milk-stool to 
her back and my boots to her ribs. Everything 
went well in the cow stable that morning until 
the milking was done and I arose to leave the 
stall; I was so filled with the joy of my experi- 
ence that I never thought of the cow, but she 
had not forgotten me, for just as I arose from 
my milking, evidently fearing that I intended 
striking her with the stool, she gave a sudden 
kick which struck the bucket and spilled the milk 



Sanctification. 39 

all over me, but now, instead of jumping at her 
and trying to pull all the hair out of her back, I 
stepped to the front of the stall, put my hand 
gently upon her back and began to make my con- 
fession and tell her my experience. I said, "Lill, 
I have been mean to you ; I have kicked you and 
cuffed you and beat you with milk-stools and 
buckets ; I have pulled hair out of your back, but 
now I want you to understand I am sanctified; 
I've got the blessing and the kick is out of me; 
you can kick if you want to, but I'm done. I love 
you, Lill; you are a good old cow. It has been 
my fault, but you will find me a different man 
from now on, for I am here to tell you that I am 
sanctified" 

The old cow seemed to understand my testi- 
mony. I convinced her that there was something 
in holiness, even though nine-tenths of the 
preachers in the country considered it fanaticism. 
At once she relaxed every muscle, put her head 
in the manger and began to eat, and I walked out 
a victor over the world, the flesh, the devil, the 
cow and myself. I did not need any pain-killer 
this time; I had taken a dose the night before 
that had killed the "old man," and that put an 
end to the use of pain-killers. Next to the cow, 
my wife was the first to understand that I had 



40 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

the blessing. When she saw me coming up the 
path that morning from the harn, my clothes be- 
spattered with milk and my face covered with a 
smile, this was enough for her, she was satisfied 
that I had the blessing. 

• Over thirty years have passed away since that 
morning and God's grace has kept me through 
all the trying scenes of a busy life. I have worked 
balky horses, milked kicking cows, been kicked 
clear out of the stall, taught calves to drink out 
of a bucket, set stubborn hens, put up stove pipes, 
helped my wife clean house, sat in the carriage 
and waited for her to come and get in, been set 
down on, criticised by preachers, have faced 
more than a thousand backslidden holiness fight- 
ers, have had unnumbered lies told on me, 
preached while four and five babies were squall- 
ing at their best; but through it all I have been 
able to maintain my experience, and, to my best 
knowledge, I have never made a break in all 
these years. Now, let all the people say, yes, let 
everybody say, Amen! 



CHAPTER IV. 
What My Consecration Involved. 

I can not frame a definition that more clearly 
expresses what full consecration involves than, 
in figurative language, saying that it means to 
sign one's name to the bottom of a great blank 
sheet as long as the span of life, and from hence- 
forth assenting, without argument or debate, to 
everything that the Holy Spirit dictates to be 
written there. Contrastively speaking, this con- 
secration includes the pains as well as the pleas- 
ures, the sorrows as well as the joys, the losses 
as well as the gains, the subtractions as well as 
the additions and multiplications of life, the 
crosses as well as the crowns, the fiery furnaces as 
well as the king's palaces, obscurity as well as 
notoriety, abasement as well as exaltation, death 
as well as life. 

The name of John T. Hatfield was placed at 
the end of just such a contract and the witnesses 
were God the Father, God the Son, and God the 
Holy Ghost. 

4i 



42 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

My consecration included all God then re- 
quired and all God ever should require through- 
out time and eternity. I took God the Father to 
be my God. I took God the Son to be my Savior. 
I took God the Holy Ghost to be my Sanctifier. 
I took God's Word to be my rule. I took God's 
people to be my people. So likewise I dedicated 
my whole self to the Lord, and I did this deliber- 
ately, sincerely, freely and forever. 

One of the first things in the catalogue that 
condemned me was my tobacco habit. I had used 
it for a number of years, both smoked and 
chewed. I made a vow to my wife a few days af- 
ter we were married that I would quit it if she de- 
sired me to, and to be sure it was her wish, any 
decent woman would not consent to a thing like 
that. I kept that vow for three years, and if she 
had held me to it, I would have been keeping it 
yet, even if I had never had any convictions from 
God. My appetite never left me, and it had not 
been a week until I was sorry I had ever made 
such a contract, and for three years I teased that 
woman to break that vow. At last one day, 
wearied with my continual prevailing upon her 
to give her consent, she said, "If you can't stand 
it any longer, go ahead." That was enough for 



What My Consecration Involved. 43 

me, and you should have seen me go ! I was soon 
on the road with a fast horse making a bee-line 
for town, and I was not long finding the place 
where it was kept, and for fear I might run short 
before I could get to town again, I purchased 
five pounds of chewing tobacco and a box of 
cigars, and I returned home with joy. How joy- 
fully could I have sung that old song : 

"Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, 
That saved a wretch like me; 
I once was lost, but now I'm found, 
And now I've got my liberty/ ' 

It was not long after my new-found experi- 
ence until God began to turn in light and make 
relevation to me in regard to this filthy habit. 
I saw that it impaired digestion, poisoned the 
blood, depressed the vital powers and weakened 
the heart. I saw that it did no good. It fur- 
nished no food. It afforded no strength. I saw 
how inharmonious it was for a Christian, who 
professed to follow the meek and lowly Jesus, to 
indulge in such a filthy habit. I never saw a 
clean person who used tobacco. The person who 
uses it has three fashionable accomplishments, 
viz. : they look nasty, act nasty and smell nasty. 
The chewer has a sallow skin, lank, gloomy fea- 
tures, irritable disposition, and this is all very 



44 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

unlike what I imagined the real Christlife should 
be. So one day, while plowing in the field, I 
shook hands with the devil for the last time and 
buried the stuff in a furrow in the field, and said 
good-by forever, and from that day until this I 
have never had one single desire for it; the dear 
Lord gave me perfect victory over the appetite. 
Praise His name ! 

Then came the lodge, so foreign from a deep 
spiritual service. It was not long until the Holy 
Spirit showed me what God meant when He said, 
"Be not unequally yoked together with unbeliev- 
ers," and, "Christ was given to us for an ex- 
ample, that we should follow in His steps, and 
have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of 
darkness, but rather reprove them/' I asked the 
Lord for a final evidence of His will to be given 
at the coming Grand Lodge, to which I was a 
delegate. I never will forget this, my first and 
last experience at a Grand Lodge. About six 
or eight hundred were in the room, and among 
them Methodist and Universalist preachers, 
skeptics and also ministers of other denomina- 
tions; all worshiping at the same shrine and 
swearing allegiance to the same principles. 
When I first stepped into the room, it was so 
close I thought I would lose my breath because 



What My Consecration Involved. 45 

of the stench of whisky and tobacco. I was soon 
convinced that this was not the crowd with whom 
I should associate. I got under great conviction, 
became very nervous, and a heavy, sinking sen- 
sation came over me. Just then a man in another 
part of the room had a fit. He turned his face 
to the ceiling, gave an unearthly yell that sounded 
to me like jthe wail of a lost soul, then began to 
kick and froth at the mouth, while some men 
carried him out. This only intensified my awful 
feelings, it seemed to me that all the pores of 
my skin just opened their mouths and poured out 
sweat until I could feel it running in streams 
down my back. I felt sure I was going to have 
one of those spells myself. I tried to feel my 
pulse, but I was so excited I could not detect a 
pulsation. I thought I was dying and I could 
feel myself sinking. I wondered if it could be 
possible that I could get to Heaven from such a 
place as that. I was not long making up my 
mind that I would get out of there, and I will 
assure you that I was not long finding the door 
and I tarried not on the way of my going, and 
as I started down the stairs, I said, "Lord, if it 
is Thy will for me to quit the lodge, let me know 
by giving me a blessing as soon as my feet touch 
the pavement below/' and scarcely had I reached 



46 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

the last step when a burst of light broke over my 
head, and a flood of joy rushed into my soul, and 
I took down the street shouting, "Glory ! Glory ! 
Glory !" That was the end, the curtain dropped, 
and I have never had any use for secret orders 
since. 

The next thing was my political party. I felt 
that nine-tenths of this country's political ma- 
chinery was lubricated with rum. I saw that the 
old parties depended upon the whisky interest 
for their victories, and my experience would not 
permit me to arise from the communion table, as 
many professing Christians do, and lock arms 
with a red-nosed, blear-eyed, fat-necked, home- 
destroying whisky dealer, and march off to the 
ballot-box together, voting the same ticket sworn 
to protect the same interest, and thus saying to 
God and man, "Here I, by casting this ballot, use 
my influence towards the continuance of this 
soul-and-body destroying business." So I just 
bade farewell to all politics not radical for "GOD 
and home and native land." 

I also received light on wearing jewelry. A 
Christian lady once asked me what I was wear- 
ing the devil's trinkets for. I was ashamed of 
any answer or argument that could be given for 
doing it, for I could think of but one reason why 



What My Consecration Involved. 47 

any one wore useless jewelry, and that was to 
gratify pride, which God declares to be an abomi- 
nation to Him. My contract with God included 
the laying aside of useless ornamentation, so 
away went the jewelry. 

Then came my call to the ministry. From the 
hour God sanctified me wholly I was deeply con- 
scious of a call to do the work of an evangelist. 
Before I launched out into the work I had 
engaged in business, and when the Vime came 
when God pressed me to the fulfillment of His 
contract to go, to do, to be anything, any time, 
anywhere that God desired, I found it very diffi- 
cult to get away from my personal business 
interests, but finally sold out, at a great financial 
sacrifice, and determined to trust God henceforth 
for all. 

For a number of years I did the work of an 
evangelist without license or ordination. In so 
doing I followed the advice of my presiding 
elder. Later on, under the administration of an- 
other elder more churchy, during a quarterly 
Conference, I was rebuked for preaching from 
texts without license. So at this Conference I 
was licensed as a local preacher. I then had a 
desire to go through the entire course, which I 
did, and was first ordained a deacon, then an 



48 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church by 

Bishop Fitzgerald, a relationship I have main- 
tained in the church to this day. 



CHAPTER V. 
Thres Marvexous Anointings. 

In a very exceptional manner God has favored 
me with some great spiritual manifestations. 

At one time, in a great camp-meeting, and on 
the last Sabbath of the camp, there were about 
ten thousand people present. The services began 
at an early hour in the morning and closed in a 
blaze of pentecostal glory at five o'clock in the 
evening. People who witnessed the scenes of 
that day declared that they saw flashes of Divine 
light appear over the congregation as wave 
after wave of heavenly power descended 
upon the assembly of thousands. After the 
crowd had departed, I tarried to transact some 
closing business. The place was so sacred, the 
atmosphere so filled with the presence of Jesus, 
that I was loth to leave the place. The benign 
influence was as real as the afterglow of a sum- 
mer sunset. Finally I was driven to a Christian 
home of a well-to-do farmer, where I was to 
spend the night. Being exceedingly weary with 

49 



50 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

the labors of the day, I early retired to bed. I 
lay down in the bed upon my back, threw out my 
arms over the bed and fell asleep. Without 
either dreaming or awaking I lay there until five 
o'clock the next morning, when I was awakened 
by the the toll of the bell calling the farmhands 
to arise. 

After this awakening I again closed my eyes 
and there appeared before me a vision. I saw a 
silver horn lined with gold, the large end resting 
upon my breast. It appeared to be many feet in 
length from the large end to the mouthpiece, 
which appeared to be quite small. I looked up 
from the large end, and had never beheld any- 
thing so indescribably beautiful. Suddenly the 
opening at the small end was darkened and there 
appeared a halo of light, which seemed to envelop 
a fast-approaching figure. As nearer and nearer 
the lovely vision approached, I soon recognized 
the central figure as that of Jesus and the beau- 
tiful halo proved to be a band of bright, shining 
angels. All the angels were singing and such 
exquisite tones can not be described, neither can 
they be compared to any earthly melodies. In a 
short time Jesus stood close beside me, and looked 
down upon me v/ith an expression that, in clearer 
tones than words, spoke of tenderest love, then 



Thres Marvelous Anointings. 51 

He disappeared. At the same time I felt a sensa- 
tion in my throat as though I was swallowing 
something. Then the horn passed away, the an- 
gels disappeared and the music ceased. I opened 
my eyes and then closed them again, hoping that 
the vision would appear once more, but I waited 
and listened in vain. 

Suddenly my attention was called to myself 
by feeling a strange sensation as of some one 
walking by my side. Simultaneously with this 
strange sensation, the following portions of 
Scripture were forcibly presented to my mind: 
"I in you, and you in Me." "Ye are the temple 
of the Holy Ghost." Presently that peculiar 
sensation ceased and I began to shake like one 
with the ague. Try as I would, I could not con- 
trol the violent shaking of my body. At last the 
shaking stopped of itself and then hot tears 
poured forth from my eyes so copiously that 
again and again I wrung them out of my satu- 
rated handkerchief, and all the time billow after 
billow of heavenly sweetness and love and bless- 
ing swept over my soul. 

I arose, dressed and descended the stairs to 
the rooms below. The anointing continued, only 
in ever-increasing power. I lay down upon a 
divan and it seemed to me that I had been laid 



52 Thirty-three Years a Live Wir£. 

upon a bed of roses and was being submerged in 
the fragrance of Heaven. In a few hours I was 
invited to take a ride in a carriage. I lay in the 
back seat, and it appeared as if the world was 
bespangled with all the colors of the rainbow. 
This blessing continued for several days, and in 
thought and feeling I lived in another world. 
The good Book says that we are to "sit in heav- 
enly places/' and truly this was one of them. 

On another occasion I was assisting a Meth- 
odist pastor in a series of meetings and was en- 
countering much opposition from the backslidden 
members of the church. They were desperately 
fighting the doctrine of holiness, which I was 
preaching. The opposition made the battle ex- 
ceedingly hard upon me, for I labored under 
great agony and burden of soul. I slept but little, 
giving most of the night over to prayer. The 
battle became hotter and hotter, but there was 
but little visible result except the ever-increasing 
crowds that packed the church from night to 
night. On the night of the seventh day, at the 
close of the service, I was so weakened by the 
long, hard strain upon me that I felt that I could 
not do better than give up the conflict against 
the dogged opposition I was encountering, but 
"man's extremity is God's opportunity." "In our 



Thrse: Marvelous Anointings. 53 

weakness then are we strong." I lifted my hand 
to pronounce the benediction and just as I raised 
it up a stream of heavenly fire fell upon me. I 
jumped into the air about three feet, then 
bounded across the church and leaped into the 
window, crying at the top of my voice; then I 
ran to the opposite side of the room and leaped 
into another window. I gave another mighty 
warwhoop and a leap from the window and made 
for the center aisle as if to run down it. 
The people became frightened and rushed toward 
the door, but the crowd was so large they could 
not get out, as the door opened in and they were 
jammed against it, and they were compelled to 
face the fire. At the same moment the fire fell 
upon the pastor, and he, too, began to race about 
and praise the Lord. Next a local preacher got 
a blessing and he joined the jubilee. Then the 
principal of the high school (now a pastor of the 
Methodist Church), who was occupying a front 
seat, caught his portion of the falling fire and he 
started down the aisle exhorting with all his 
might. The people were broken down in tears, 
the power of Hell was defeated, and a great re- 
vival of religion broke forth upon the community 
which resulted in scores of souls being saved. 
I was so under the power of the Spirit that I 



54 Thirty-thrss Years a Live Wire. 

could not stand alone, and fell three times before 
they got me out of the house. Such wonderful 
blessings swept over my soul and such mighty 
power of God vibrated through my body that I 
could feel the heavenly currents leaking from my 
fingers and toes. The crushing burden rolled 
away and I soon felt as light as a feather and I 
fell asleep praising the Lord. I rested that night 
seemingly on the very bosom of the Savior. 

The third marvelous enduement occurred in a 
small country church while I was helping an- 
other Methodist preacher. We were having a 
very powerful meeting and it was a very harmo- 
nious one. The people were united and worked 
together in perfect unity. The Spirit of the Lord 
was present and doing effective work within the 
hearts of the people. One night while the altar 
was crowded with seekers, I was instructing a 
seeker in the way of faith, but she was so full of 
unbelief that I could not accomplish much in her 
behalf. Finally I broke forth in earnest prayer 
asking God to give me the blessing if the woman 
did not accept it herself. God answered my 
prayer, the power fell upon me, and until the 
midnight hour I was in an unconscious state. 
When the pastor asked if we had better not close 
the meeting, it waked me. I arose at once, and 



Three Marvelous Anointings. 55 

when I reached my feet the Holy-Ghost power 
fell upon me. It was very evident to all that the 
fire of God was burning in my soul, and unsaved 
men and women in front of me threw up their 
hands and began to scream. I reached forth my 
hand and touched one woman and immediately 
she was saved. The people seeing that God had 
given me a power of impartation, rushed upon 
me. I managed to lay hands upon four persons 
und they were all instantly saved. The last one 
that I touched was an unsaved man and as I 
placed my hands upon him the power left me and 
knocked the man down. I felt it stream off of 
my fingers like hot lightning. The man soon 
arose, shouting victory. I was made to realize 
that passage of Scripture where the woman 
touched Jesus, and He said He perceived vir- 
tue had gone out of Him. I was very weak 
after this experience, but unspeakably ihappy. 
The converts went on unto perfection and ob- 
tained a pure heart and became splendid Chris- 
tian characters and effective Gospel workers. 

Now, if I had been in some Tongues meeting, 
or in some third-blessing, fire-baptized meeting, 
how easily it would have been for me to claim 
such an experience and start out upon a new line 
of teaching. I have had many such similar ex- 



56 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

periences as these three already mentioned, but 
I have never yet side-tracked to run after some 
new experience and make it conditional. I have 
stuck to my Methodist doctrine along these lines 
without a waver. There is but one Holy Ghost, 
but many anointings. There is but one Missis- 
sippi River, but many tributaries, and some very 
large ones. A person can be in Minnesota and 
be on the Mississippi River, but what does he 
know of what is below him ? Unless he cuts loose 
and goes down he will never see the river much 
larger; but as you go down the river grows 
larger, and you are striking new streams all the 
time. But we must stay on the Mississippi and 
keep going down if we want to see more streams 
and receive enlargement; but if we take up a 
Missouri, or an Ohio, our stream will get less all 
the time, until by and by we'll come out at the 
little end of nothing. But if we stay in the old 
Mississippi, our stream will get larger and larger 
all the time. We will be passing Missouris, 
and Ohios, and Reds, Arkansas, and hundreds 
of others of smaller dimension, then shoot out 
into a gulf, and then a sea, and then the broad 
ocean. From here we set sail and explore the 
deep. Such is the sanctified life. The saint who 
lives in secret with God and spends much of his 



Three: Marvelous Anointings. 57 

time in communicating with the Spirit will re- 
ceive these Divine anointings, and that quite 
frequently, until by and by he will strike an ocean 
without a shore. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Using An Unexpected Opportunity. 

In my early experience in the sanctified life, 
while I was still engaged in business, and before 
I had launched out into the evangelistic field, I 
had a very interesting experience and victory 
over my pastor, who was conducting services in 
my home church. The pastor was a good man, 
quite spiritual, of a lovable disposition, and was 
an excellent shepherd of the flock. He had one 
serious fault: he had no backbone, he lacked 
courage to preach his convictions on the doctrine 
of holiness. He believed in holiness, and even 
professed to have the experience, but he was so 
afraid he would split the church and cause divi- 
sion and trouble among the members that he re- 
mained quiet. I told him if holiness would split 
the church, the sooner the better, and that would 
show what was in it. I was then young in my 
experience and full of zeal. Everywhere I went 

58 



Using an Un£xp£ct£d Opportunity. 59 

I talked scarcely anything else but sanctification. 
I was then class-leader in the church and greatly 
burdened for the members of the class. The sub- 
ject was giving great concern to many people 
both in the church and out. The "old man" was 
stirred in many carnal hearts. "The fight was 
on," "but the end was not yet." The pastor was 
frightened and compromising with the holiness- 
fighting element. He had his hand on the throt- 
tle, but the engine was off the track. He could 
ring the bell and blow the whistle, but the thing 
would not go. 

He ran the meeting two weeks without open- 
ing a service for testimony, or volunteer prayer, 
or praise, for fear I would take the floor and 
precipitate a crisis. There was much conviction 
upon the people, and the pastor declared he 
wanted a revival, but, then, upon one hand he 
had a crowd of holiness fighters, and on the other 
a "holiness crank," as they called me, but I was 
one that pastor could not turn. I was the ele- 
phant upon his hands. The fighters were telling 
him not to allow me to have a thing to do with 
the meeting or they would not attend, and I was 
telling him to put the meeting on full salvation 
lines and preach the doctrines of our own church 
whatever the cost might be. 



60 Thirty-Three Years a Live WirK. 

The pastor wished to be considerate of my 
desire because I was selling him all his groceries 
and dry goods at cost, was one of the most liberal 
members in the church, and was furnishing about 
all the wood and kerosene for the meeting. I 
was in great agony of soul and continually pray- 
ing for the outpouring of God's Spirit upon the 
meeting. I went into the homes and would tell 
them I came in there to pray; it was a cold recep- 
tion I received. Some would tell me they did not 
want me to pray, and I would get down on my 
knees and pray regardless of what they said. The 
dear Lord was helping me to make it hot for 
them. They censured me and condemned me 
upon every hand, and said I spoiled the meeting. 
One week-day morning, after the meeting had 
been in progress for over two weeks without a 
break, I had been detained at the store and was 
a few minutes late in reaching the church. While 
I was passing down the street the Lord asked 
me if I would take the service this morning if 
the way opened. I said, "Yes, Lord, if it be Thy 
will." When I reached the church the congrega- 
tion was engaged in prayer, so I slipped quietly 
into the house and kneeled behind a rear seat. 
After the congregation arose, I still remained on 
my knees behind the bench. The pastor sur- 



Using an Un^xp^ct^d Opportunity. 6i 

veyed the congregation and, to his great satis- 
faction, observed, as he thought, that I was not 
present. He then said to the congregation, "We 
have had no service since this meeting began in 
which the people have had an opportunity to take 
an active part. Now I am going to throw the 
meeting open, and I want every one present to 
feel perfectly at home and free to do as the Lord 
may lead you. I want you to pray, sing, shout 
or exhort, for the meeting is yours." I was still 
behind the bench, and was now shaking from 
head to foot with Holy-Ghost power. The pas- 
tor sat down and then looked up to again survey 
the congregation, and, to his consternation, 
whom did he behold but that troubler in Israel, 
John T. Hatfield, walking down the aisle with 
glowing face and flaming eyes. What should I 
do? There was but one thing for me to do; I 
had now crossed the long-dreaded Rubicon and 
must take the consequences. It was like a clap 
of thunder out of a clear sky. The preacher 
turned pale, dropped his head, and wiggled and 
squirmed about in his seat; the people's heads 
went down, while there were a few who put on 
a brazen look and stared at me hatefully with a 
face that would have made a good sign for a 
v inegar factory ; but none of these things moved 



62 Thirty-thrss Ysars a Liv£ Wir3. 

me. I was in the order of God, and I knew it; 
so I entered the gulpit, expressed my apprecia- 
tion of the privilege the pastor had kindly offered 
them, and then I broke forth with a red-hot 
exhortation, which I followed with an altar call. 

For some time not a person responded, then 
I began to call various ones out by name. I called 
a man who refused to come; I called him the 
second time, and the third, then finding that this 
would not bring him, I sprang from the rostrum 
and started down the aisle after him. The old 
sinner immediately leaped to his feet and cried, 
'Tm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming !" He 
rushed to the altar and began to scream for 
mercy. I returned to the pulpit and continued to 
call them out by name. "Mary, you are a back- 
slider; come and get reclaimed. Elizabeth, you 
need to be sanctified ; come along. John, you are 
an old sinner; come and let God save you." 
Every person who was called responded, and 
soon the altar and the space around the front 
was filled with weeping sinners and needy be- 
lievers. 

A large number who sought the Lord that 
morning prayed through to great victory, and 
we closed up in a blaze of glory. The tide was 
turned; those who were my worst enemies were 



Using an Unexpected Opportunity. 63 

now my best friends. The poor pastor fell under 
great condemnation because of his attitude to- 
wards me, and from that service he went directly 
to his study and there confessed to the Lord that 
I was right, and asked the Lord to give him the 
same liberty; the fire struck him and it was not 
long until he was hunting me to tell the glad 
news, and when he found me he said, "Brother 
Hatfield, from this day you are a free man on 
my work. God is with you, and I have learned a 
lesson in this to keep my hands off of God's 
anointed." 

The following week there were scores of con- 
versions and thirty-four sanctified wholly. That 
year I labored with this pastor several months 
in revival work. Our labors together resulted in 
several hundred conversions and a great number 
of sanctifications and a large increase of mem- 
bership to the church. "Let everybody say, 
Amen ! Let all the people say, Yes !" 



CHAPTER VII. 
An Unwelcome Guest. 

The following incident, which transpired dur- 
ing my early days of Christian work, is charac- 
teristic of myself and displays that fearless 
nature I possess which has successfully carried 
me through many a daring exploit, where many 
other timid ones would have suffered defeat. 

I was invited to assist my pastor in a revival 
meeting on his work. We arrived at the church 
and were greeted with the approving nods and 
smiles of many members of the church. The 
service was opened with the usual form, after 
which I read my text and began my sermon. 
While I was making some introductory remarks, 
the people looked pleasant and nodded their 
approval, but by and by, as I advanced with the 
sermon, when the chips began to fly and things 
began to get warm, I could see some heads going 
sideways, their cheeks began to get red and their 
lips to turn white and their noses to look blue. 
As Bud Robinson says, they were fighting under 

6 4 ' 



An Unwi&come Guest. 65 

the American flag, the red, white and blue; but 
this only encouraged me, for I loved a fight, and 
I gave them the truth all the hotter; but ere I 
reached the conclusion, the most of their heads 
had gone down and their faces were hid from 
view, and I was shooting them in the back of 
the head. 

At the close of the service an aged brother 
and sister, greatly enraged and the woman with 
a cracker on the end of her tongue and eyes snap- 
ping fire, sharply said, "We want you to under- 
stand that we are not half so bad as you think 
we are. We want you to know we have been 
in the way for forty years." "Do you mean to 
say that you have been in the way for forty 
years?" I asked. "Yes, sir, we have," replied 
the woman. "Well," said I, "for Jesus' sake get 
out of the way and give a poor sinner a chance." 
As I passed down the aisle another aged sister 
attacked me. She had a face on her like a cran- 
berry marsh and a disposition like a bee that had 
gone out of business at one end and gone into 
business at the other end. She said, "You talk 
as if we had no religion up here, but I want you 
to know that we are not backslidden as you think 
we are. We have been standing at our post for 
many years." "So you have been standing at 



66 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

your post these many years, have you ?" I replied. 
"Yes, we have/' was the answer. "Well, then, 
sister," said I, "don't you think it time to unhitch 
and get a move on you and bring something to 
pass ?" After the crowd had dispersed the pastor 
approached me with a graveyard expression on 
his face, and said, "Brother Hatfield, I don't 
know what to do." "Why don't you know what 
to do?" I asked. "Well, you have preached so 
straight here this morning that the people are all 
mad at you, and have told me to not bring you 
to their homes." "Well, bless the Lord," I re- 
plied, "you understand we can't carry on the 
meeting without something to eat, and if we stay 
these people must feed us. Now, brother, this is 
the test of our faith. The Lord has promised 
to supply all our needs and I need something to 
eat. Which is the maddest family in the 

church?" "Well, Brother and Sister W are 

furious," said the pastor. "Now," said I, "come, 
get into the buggy; we'll take dinner with 

Brother and Sister W ." 

Away we drove down the country road, every 
Step aerainst the protest of the pastor. Finally 
we reached a beautiful country residence. Mr. 

W was out in the barnyard putting up his 

horse. The pastor, at sight of him, became very 



An Unwixcome Guest. 67 



nervous and begged me to drive on without stop- 
ping. "No," said I, "I need something to eat, 
and the Lord has promised to supply my needs, 
and right here is the place He calculates to 
do it." "Well," said the pastor, "you let me put 
away the horse, I want to speak to the old gentle- 
man." I knew the pastor wanted to make apolo- 
gies and lay all the blame on me. I shouted 
glory and sprang from the buggy and marched 
up the walk with the air of a conqueror, and 
when I reached the house I found the front door 
unlocked; I turned the knob and walked in. It 
was their parlor, so I seated myself in a big, 
heavily cushioned rocker and made myself at 
home. As I sat there I could look through the 
window and see the pastor and old Brother 

W in the barnyard in earnest conversation, 

and by the way the old gentleman was gesticu- 
lating, he reminded me of a goat standing on its 
hind legs, or a cat with a rainbow spine. His 
anger had gotten his back up sure enough, but, 
thank God! I was as happy as a bald-headed 
bumblebee in a ten-acre clover patch. I was just 
sucking honey from the blossoms. The Lord 
told me I could have my dinner and I knew I was 
going to get it, if I would obey Him. 

At last the pastor entered the room with a 



68 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

face on him that looked like a ghost. He was as 
pale as a sheet and frightened almost to death. 
He said, "Brother Hatfield, you have made the 
greatest blunder of your life. I would not be 

surprised if Brother W would come in here 

and kick you out for your impudence. He is the 
maddest man I ever saw." "Well, my brother," 
I replied, "you have invited me to help you in 
this meeting, and you certainly understand that 
we can not carry on this revival without some- 
thing to eat. Now we have done our best and 
we will just trust the Lord to see us safely 
through. The Lord has said He would set a 
table before us in the presence of our enemies, 
and if He ever had a chance to do so, it surely 
is now." 

Ere long Mrs. W stepped to the door and 

invited the pastor out to dinner. At once I arose, 
as though I was the one invited, and as inno- 
cently as though not a thing had gone amiss led 
the way to the dining-room. There were three 
chairs at the table. No provision had been made 
for the unwelcome guest, but nothing daunted, 
I smiled and sat down in one of them, and 
after grace by the pastor I began to help myself 
to the good things before me. Ever and anon, 
I praised the Lord and complimented the cook. 



An UnwsIvComs Guicst. 69 

After eating most heartily, in spite of the omi- 
nous storm that threatened to precipitate itself 
upon me, I again retired to the parlor. After an 

interval of nearly an hour, Mr. and Mrs. W , 

all loaded up and ready to fire without further 
provocation, entered the room. Immediately 
upon their entrance, I called them to prayer. I 
fell upon my knees and began to storm the throne 
of grace for Heaven's blessing upon the people. 
I prayed with all my soul for the old brother and 
sister who had "so kindly entertained God's un- 
worthy servants," and the fire began to fall. The 
pastor got to shouting and soon the old couple 
began to pray and confess and cry for mercy, 
and ere long they joined in the rejoicing. Pres- 
ently they rushed over to me with extended 
hands and weeping eyes, saying, "Brother Hat- 
field, we were mad enough to kill you, but now 
we love you. God has shown us that we were 
wrong. We declared we would not allow such a 
crank as you to come into our house, but now 
you can have the best room in the house, and we 
request the privilege of entertaining you during 
the entire meeting." 

That night Brother and Sister W were 

so filled with the Spirit that they took the meet- 
ing into their own hands. They told the con- 



jo Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

gregation all about the experiences of the day, 
including the great blessing they had received at 
home, and they urged the people to seek the Lord 
as I had advised; they said I had preached the 
truth and they had better confess their sins and 
seek the Lord. We had no preaching that night, 

the testimony of Brother and Sister W was 

sufficient; the altar was filled and a great revival 
broke out and scores of souls were saved. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
First Revival and First Camp-meeting. 

To me, the idea that God had called me to 
preach seemed almost incredible, but, Gideon 
like, I put out my fleece to make a thorough test 
of the case. With the thought of preaching the 
Gospel came the desire to join the Conference, 
be a pastor, have a comfortable parsonage, draw 
a good salary, have a good library and learn to 
preach. But these "castles in the air" were all 
demolished when God made it clear to me that 
my call was to the hardships and the vicissitudes 
of the evangelistic life. 

I decided to conduct my first meeting in the 
old church where my father and mother retained 
their membership, and where I had often at- 
tended, in their company, during my boyhood 
days. It was a small country church located in 
a beech and sugar grove. The place had run 
down until it had been abandoned and was now 
without preaching and with a very few members. 
I thought if God would give me a great revival 

71 



72, Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

there, under the unpromising circumstances, that 
it would be satisfactory evidence of my call to 
the ministry. The day was set for the opening 
of the revival and the community duly notified. 
From the start the attendance was very encour- 
aging, and in less than a week the old church was 
filled. I was not doing what the schools called 
preaching, I did not pretend to arrange any 
homiletical discourses, but I read most of my 
messages out of God's Word and filled in the 
remainder of my time with singing and shout- 
ing. At last I shouted myself hoarse and my 
voice nearly failed me entirely. My desire and 
burden for the salvation of sinners was so great 
that I lost all appetite for food and spent my time 
weeping out my heart's desire before the Lord. 
Seekers had kneeled at the altar and a few had 
professed conversion, but the results were not 
such as would satisfy my call to the ministry. 

At last I felt that I must have help and I 
prayed all night and a day for God to send me a 
preacher. On my way to the service one night, 
as I was passing through a heavy strip of timber, 
I kneeled down and once more urged the Lord 
to send me a preacher. I fell back among the 
leaves and looking towards the heavens the glory 
of God seemed to stream from every star into my 



First Revival and Camp-meeting. 73 

soul. A silent, but distinct, voice said, "Arise, 
and go, I will send you a preacher." I arose, 
and looked at my watch, and it was just seven 
o'clock. I started on to church with the assur- 
ance that help would come, but every step of the 
way until I reached that church the devil walked 
behind me and said, "You know that is not so; 
there will be no preacher there/' but I kept say- 
ing, "It's a lie, it's a lie ; God has promised me a 
preacher and he will be there." On my arrival 
at the church the devil left me at the entrance, 
which was on the west side of the building. I 
approached the church from the north, and a 
Quaker preacher from the south, and we met at 
the church door. I said, "Glory to God, thou art 
the man; the Lord wants you to preach to-night" 
The Quaker replied that he had come for that 
purpose. I asked him if he had heard of the 
meeting, and the Quaker said he had not until 
that evening at the supper-table while the clock 
was striking seven, when a voice said, "Arise 
and go to Gilboa Church, and I will give thee a 
message for the people." This was certainly a 
remarkable answer to prayer and God did indeed 
have a message for the Quaker to deliver to the 
people that night. It was an extraordinary ser- 
vice. There were moments when it seemed that 



74 Seemons and Sayings. 



toward God. If I repent, I cannot help believing; and 
there is no power on earth or in heaven that can help 
me believe until I repent. My business is to repent, 
and the believing will look after itself; and then God 
gives salvation because I comply with the conditions. 
That is the way it runs. Some say, "My trouble is 
doubt." If you will take hold of your doubt and pull it 
up by the roots, you will find a seed at the bottom, and 
that seed is sin. I never had any doubts in my life. 
If you will empty your hearts and meet the conditions 
then the doubts will be gone. Last February a year 
ago I was walking up the railroad track with my pas- 
tor, Brother Bobbins, of Oartersville, taking a little 
exercise. As we passed up the road the wind came up 
this side of us, then in our faces, and then at our 
backs. Brother Bobbins said, " We are going to have 
a cyclone about two o'clock." I said, "How do you 
know? Have you gotten out your almanac?" He 
said, "No." I said, "You ought to get out an almanac 
if you can tell when things are coming." We had not 
been home ten minutes before I saw it, like a hundred 
thousand mogul engines, sweeping things into the 
air and wiping out plantations and sections of the 
sountry. I stood and watched it in its course. If a 
fellow lets the conditions meet in him — that is all 
The conditions of a moral cyclone are about to meet 
in this city, and if you do n't want to be caught in it 
you had better get out of town. There is a moral cy- 
clone sweeping over your souls that will sweep out 
every thought that God disapproves. Now let condi- 
tions meet to-day, and to-morrow the cyclone is inev- 
itable. Beligion is just as much a reality with me aa 
that I have got my hand on this poplar railing. Be- 



Sermons and Sayings. V5 



ligion is just as much a reality with me as that I have 
four fingers on each hand. You might persuade me 
that ten thousand things are not true, but you could 
not persuade me that some divine power has not 
touched my heart and revolutionized me. Like the 
fellow at the camp-meeting who got up and said, " If 
you all do n't believe I have got religion, you go home 
and ask my wife; she will tell you." And if there is 
any woman in the world who believes that her hus- 
band has religion, that woman is my wife. Kepent- 
ance is the first conscious movement of the soul from 
sin toward God. Many a fellow is praying for rain 
with his tub the wrong side up. God cannot fill a tub 
when it is wrong side up without inverting the law of 
gravity. God is holding up his clouds for you while 
you are holding your tubs the wrong side up. Turn 
them up and push them under the eaves if you want 
them to be filled, for the shower is coming. The hour 
is nearly up, but I will speak a moment on the last 
part of the text. 

"And thy house." Thank God for the privilege 
and assurance that we shall go to heaven! "And thy 
house." Thank God for the privilege and assurance 
that the children can go to heaven! Thank God for 
the privilege and assurance that servants can go to 
heaven ! I want my wife to go, I want my children to 
go, I want my servant-boy to go, I want my cook to 
go. Now, brethren, you may all throw away these op- 
portunities and neglect to get your children to be re- 
ligious if you want to. Every night and morning I 
want every man to have family prayer. There are 
many children reared in what you call Christian homes 
who do not know the way to heaven. Poor little fel- 



76 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

about a foot of the paper, and without ever once 
raising his eyes he slowly, lowly, solemnly and 
deliberately read every word of it. Fortunately 
it was only about an hour and a half long, but 
that was too much for me, and while he was 
grinding his mill I sat there and planned the 
arrangement of the camp-ground, and looked 
forward for more hopeful things to come. I also 
promised the Lord that, if I ever did read any 
sermon in all my life, I would never read one on 
"Faith," and I have kept that vow until this 
present day. 

It was campaign year, and while the preach- 
ers were sitting around quarreling over politics 
and fighting holiness, I was leading hungry souls 
away to the woods and getting them saved, and 
then returning to the camp jumping and shouting 
with some happy new-born souls, and these 
preachers would look as sheepish as a guilty dog. 

It was the custom before each service for the 
elder to call upon one of the brethren to deliver 
the message. One day he called upon Brother 

L to take charge, and he had just spent a 

couple of hours in a heated discussion upon poli- 
tics, so he told the elder he had no message, but 
the elder insisted that he should take charge of 
the meeting. Finally Brother L opened his 



First R^vivai, and Camp-mating. 77 

satchel and drew out a handful of manuscripts. 
(It was to be hoped that he would not find any- 
thing on the subject of "Faith"!), looked them 
over, occasionally uttering the words, "Lord, 
help us." Finding nothing that he could preach 
upon, he threw them back into his satchel and 
said, "I haven't got a thing; ask Brother Hatfield 
to deliver the message." The elder was not very 
much disposed to do so; at last, however, I was 
chosen to deliver the message. I made no pre- 
tentions of being a preacher, I had no sermons, 
I did not so much as make an effort to preach. I 
simply stepped before the people, prayed up and 
full of the Holy Ghost, and fired away, said any- 
thing that came to my mind, and let the truth 
strike whoever it may. 

I compared those preachers upon the plat- 
form to every homely illustration I could think 
of. I compared them to one of these big. fine 
Brahma hens that would be set on a nest of nice 
eggs, but every time she would leave her nesf 
and return she would break an tgg or two, and 
at hatching-time she would come strutting off 
with one weakly little chicken and a lot of rotten 
eggs and shells sticking to her feathers, and 
strut around as if she had done wonders, and, 
when feed would be thrown out, she would gob- 



78 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

ble it all herself and leave her little chick to 
starve. Then I contrasted them to a common 
little banty hen, that would make her nest away 
in the brush, hatch every egg, and come out with 
a great brood of lively chicks and scratch and 
forage and keep her eyes open for hawks and 
raise every chicken. Then the following appli- 
cation: "You preachers remind me of the 
Brahma hen. You have your dried-up, written 
sermons, but have no power to produce convic- 
tion. You open the doors of the church, take in 
anything hit or miss, good or bad. Perhaps you 
do get one little sickly convert, but the stench 
from those rotten, unsaved ones will kill it. You 
walk up to Conference with your silk plug hat, 
broadcloth suit, gold-headed cane and big Ma- 
sonic watch-charm and strut around over your 
big report of rotten eggs." 

Again, I compared them to an old sow with 
a dozen pigs : the old sow would be so poor you 
could sun bees through her, and the pigs trot- 
ting behind her squealing for something to eat 
and the poor old sow had nothing for them. 
"Just like some of you," I said, "who have big 
congregations that are starving for the pure milk 
from the Word of God, and you up in the pulpit 
with an empty bottle fiddling with a corkscrew 



First Rsvivai, and Camp-mating. 79 

trying to get the stopper out. Professing to 
preach on holiness, and at the same time righting 
it. Who could ever understand or get any food 
out of a sermon of that kind?" It reminds me 
of an evangelist once sitting in his house in a 
big city. A man came riding along in a junk 
wagon and at the same time he was crying out 
with a loud voice, "Rah, Bah, Sah! Rah, Bah, 
Sah!" The evangelist said, "What is that man 
saying?" He went to the door and called to the 
man, asking what it was he had for sale. He 
said, "I have nothing to sell; I am buying rags, 
bottles and old sacks," and down the street he 
went crying, "Rah, Bah, Sah! Rah, Bah, Sah! 
Rah, Bah, Sah \" These holiness-fighting preach- 
ers, who have nothing, and yet pretend to preach! 
on holiness, remind me of this junk peddler. 
They put on their glasses and read their little 
rose-water essays with their eyes looking on the 
paper, occasionally looking up over their glasses 
at the congregation, and the people do not know 
any more about what they are talking about than 
that evangelist knew what that peddler was say- 
ing. Imagine a preacher bobbing his head up 
and down looking over his glasses at the people 
and saying, "Rah, Bah, Sah! Rah, Bah, Sah! 
Rah, Bah, Sah \" Now, who on earth could ever 



80 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 
get sanctified under such preaching as that? 

Well, some of the preachers rebuked me 
severely, but I took it sweetly. They would say, 
"What did you say that for ?" I could only tell 
them I was trusting God for the message and I 
had to say things as they came to me, that I did 
not feel like standing there and saying nothing, 
so I just let it go. 



■' :•'■■<* 



CHAPTER IX. 

Forcing My Way — Predicament of a Holi- 
ness Fighter — A Sudden Death. 

In a certain little country church in the State 
of Indiana, not far from where I now live, after 
much prayer and deliberation, I was very much 
impressed by the Holy Spirit to conduct a revival 
service in this church. It was a very cold, dead, 
backslidden Methodist. Church, whose pastor and 
officials were much opposed to my radical preach- 
ing and the means and measures I employed in 
conducting revivals. It was very clear to me 
that if I got into that church I would be com- 
pelled to take the bull by the horns and push my 
way in without invitation or permission* and turn 
the Gospel gun upon the devil's host, trusting 
the God of battles to see me through. In most 
instances such a course would be entirely out of 
order and reason, but in this case the Spirit of 
God was leading, consequently the daring under- 
taking proved to be right. How lustily some 
people sing that little song, "Pm going through, 

81 



82 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

Jesus," but when it comes to bearding the old 
lion in his den, they never get there. Like Lot's 
wife, they back out and crystallize into a pillar 
of salt. Well, God wants His people to be the 
salt of the earth, but He does not want it put up 
that way. 

It was on one Sabbath evening, when the 
pastor was at another point on his circuit and a 
service was being conducted by a layman of the 
church, I stepped in, made my way to the pulpit, 
and took charge of the meeting. After singing 
and prayer I read a text and then proceeded to 
pour forth a searching, soul-stirring message 
under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Sitting 
there under the light of the Truth that night, 
many got a view of their wicked hearts and be- 
came greatly aroused. A large portion of the 
congregation became very angry and declared 
they would not attend another service, but the 
next night found them all there on their roost 
with an expression on their faces that would 
sour Jersey milk, and a disposition like a cross- 
cut saw, all on the war-path, with paint on their 
cheeks and feathers in their hats and tommy- 
hatchet in hand. They were not an inspiring 
crowd to preach to, but I had seen the like before 
and was quite used to such conditions, and with 



Forcing My Way. 83 

much liberty I again proceeded to shake up the 
old "dry bones." 

The meeting was held in the month of July, 
right in the midst of wheat harvest. I spent the 
most of the days in the woods upon my knees 
praying for a revival and fighting mosquitoes. 
Every night I would enter the pulpit with God's 
power running through me like electric currents. 
This was more than the official board could en- 
dure, so one night they laid hands upon me, led 
me to the door, and out behind the church, and 
ordered me to leave the premises. There was a 
great crowd present. The house and the yard 
were filled with people, and I was at a loss to 
know just the course to pursue. Finally I deter- 
mined that, since God had sent me there, I would 
remain until God told me to leave, and they could 
just go on with their rat-killing if they wanted 
to. Just then a big double-fisted sinner ap- 
proached me in the dark and whispered into my 
ear that he was my friend and there were a lot 
of others that would stand by me, so I walked 
back into that church and there were three old 
sisters on their knees engaged in earnest prayer 
for me. I said, "Bless God! when the Lord is 
with me, and the sinners are going to stand by 
me, and three old sisters on their knees praying 



84 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

for me, the battle is ours." My soul was all 
aflame, and with a mighty determination to push 
the battle through to the very gates of Hell, I 
marched down the aisle, sprang into the pulpit, 
and for about forty minutes I poured forth volley 
after volley of Sinai truth that burned into the 
hearts of both hypocrites and open sinners. 

At the conclusion of the message, I declared 
I would never invite sinners to come to an altar 
over the heads of a lot of those dried-up, holi- 
ness-fighting professors in the "Amen Corner," 
whose testimony rattled like dry beans in an 
empty gourd. I cleared the aisle and put the 
mourner's-bench down there, and then exhorted 
sinners to seek God at once. They fell in from 
the right and left, weeping and crying for mercy, 
and we closed up with great victory and many 
were saved and some were sanctified. 

The following afternoon I called at the home 
of one of the men who was one of the party 
that led me out of the church. The man was 
very angry and said he had forbidden his wife 
to ever say the word "sanctification" upon his 
premises, and that he would not allow anybody 
else to speak the word in his presence. He was 
so enraged that I thought it best to quietly with- 
draw and leave him and the Lord and the devil 



Forcing My Way. 85 

to fight it out. The Lord had a hook in his jaw, 
and the devil was trying to take it out. As I 
passed out of the door he made a few threats, but 
did me no personal violence. The next day he 
was out in his field cutting wheat. He was still 
on the war-path, fighting holiness; old carnality 
was stirred, the reaper was talking to him at 
every turn of the wheel, the sickle was saying, 
"Sanc-ti-fy, sanc-ti-fy, sanc-ti-fy, sanc-ti-fy, sanc- 
ti-fy. ,, This put him under deeper conviction 
and so greatly enraged him that he refused to 
run the reaper any longer. He was going to 
stop the reaper from testifying to sanctification, 
but as soon as the reaper stopped, all nature be- 
gan to testify. The frogs began croaking, "Sanc- 
ti-fy, sanc-ti-fy, sanc-ti-fy," and then the grass- 
hoppers took up the glad refrain, and began 
chirping, "Sanc-ti-fy, sanc-ti-fy." On arriving 
at the barn the old rooster hopped upon the fence, 
flopped his wings a few times, and then seemed 
to take a deep breath and with all his might 
crowed out, "Sanctify, sanctify, sanctifica-a-a- 
tion ! I" It was an old rooster that waked Peter 
up and opened his eyes to his backslidden situ- 
ation, and this old backslider was getting his last 
call. He was so enraged he did not realize what 
he was doing. 



86 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

The following morning before daybreak he 
was out riding one of his horses in from the pas- 
ture, and clinching his fist together he said, "I'll 
fight this thing until I die." Immediately upon 
giving utterance to these words, God smote him 
and he fell to the ground unconscious. After a 
long search, his family found him, about the 
middle of the forenoon, lying where he had 
fallen. They carried him into the house and 
after some effort they succeeded in bringing him 
to consciousness. The first words he uttered 
were, "I've been in Hell and am now done fight- 
ing holiness. Wife, you can talk sanctification 
all you want to, and I want the experience my- 
self." His wife said, "Don't you think your 
tobacco will be in your way?" He rolled a big 
cud out of his mouth and threw it away, then 
said, "Can you think of anything else, wife? I 
am willing to quit anything, that I might obtain 
this blessing." It would not be necessary to say 
that man got the blessing. It was only a short 
while until he was in the full enjoyment of it, 
and that man from that day until this has been 
one of my best friends. 

There was another incident of this meeting 
well worthy of space upon these pages. I was 
entertained one night in the home of a young 



Forcing My Way. 87 

married couple, who were my friends in this 
meeting. Both husband and wife were under 
great conviction, but the Lord strongly im- 
pressed me that the wife should be saved at any 
cost very soon. The next morning, while en- 
gaged in prayer, I began to pray for her salva- 
tion. I insisted that she should pray for herself, 
and I began to instruct her, and until the noon 
hour I continued singing and praying over her. 
When dinner-time came around, she said she 
thought she had better prepare something to eat, 
but I said, "I am willing to do without dinner if 
you are willing to seek on." She consented and 
we wrestled until five o'clock, when she said she 
must stop and get supper. We were both about 
worn out, as we had been on our knees about 
ten hours. I felt that I had exhausted every 
resource and could think of nothing further that 
I could suggest to encourage her to press on to 
victory. All in an instant the Spirit suggested 
one more thing, and, characteristically, I obeyed 
at once. I requested the seeking woman to stop 
praying and look up into the corner of the room 
and there she would see a light. The young 
woman did so, and immediately she cried out, 
"I see it ! I see it ! It's coming toward me," and 
she sprang to her feet with a clear evidence of a 



88 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

bright experience. It was not many days after 
that until she died. 



CHAPTER X. 

Dragged Through the Snow by An Infidel. 
Another Unusual Circumstance. 

During a great meeting, in which over three 
hundred sinners were converted, and a great 
number of believers were sanctified wholly, I 
encountered some so-called infidels. They at- 
tacked the services and always wore a critical 
cap. They were ever hungering and thirsting 
after an argument. Argument was their "pillar 
of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night;" 
their meat and drink. They sought me for this 
purpose, but I told them that I had no time to 
waste upon them. I knew* that argument, on 
religious subjects especially, rarely convinces 
either of the parties participating. Rev. M. W. 
Knapp strongly impressed this upon his stu- 
dents, often telling them, in those early days 
of the Cincinnati Bible School, that "God never 
called us to argue the Gospel, but He command- 
ed us to go into all the world and preach it." 
The mode of water baptism has been argued 

8 9 



90 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

and debated by the different denominations, for 
generations, and all the time, God thought so 
little of the mode that He did not take the 
trouble to mention it in the Bible. If the same 
time and zeal had been spent in the declaration 
of essential Bible truths, with the Holy Ghost 
sent down from Heaven, pressing teinners to 
immediate repentance, how many souls, in Hell 
to-day, might have been walking the golden 
streets of the New Jerusalem! When the devil 
sidetracks a man of God from the main line of 
preaching the Gospel to any of the numerous 
sidelines of debate'and argument and controver- 
sy, he has the victory and all Hell rejoices over 
it. Infidelity is ready to meet argument with 
argument, contention with contention, ridicule 
with ridicule, caricature with caricature, Greek 
roots with Greek roots, and historical references 
with historical references ; but bring before them 
a man full of the Holy Ghost, with a clear know- 
ledge of personal salvation, and happy and 
Christlike, and then you have an argument it 
cannot answer; a puzzle it cannot solve. This 
was the method I had in dealing with such. 

During one of the services, a leader among 
them, while standing in his seat and beholding 
the wonderful outpourings of God's Spirit upon 



Dragged Through Ths Snow. 91 

the seekers and workers about the altar (we had 
just had a concert prayer, the saints were at a 
high pitch in their spiritual enjoyment), declared 
there was nothing in it, that it was all of the 
devil. The very instant he said the words he 
turned pale and felt a strange sensation pass 
over him, but he braced himself up as best he 
could, wondering what was troubling him so 
strangely. The next moment he was stricken 
down between the seats, and then, springing forth 
like a wild man, rushed to the altar. In a few 
minutes the altar was filled with sinners and in- 
fidels, who were prostrated before God, weep- 
ing, groaning, screaming and pleading for mercy. 
Finally I approached the infidel who had led the 
way to the altar, and I found him in an awful 
condition. He was badly frightened and the 
perspiration was dripping from his contorted 
face. He was running his fingers through his 
hair and into his face and ears. I placed my 
hand on the man's head, and said, "Look to Je- 
sus, my brother." He turned on his knees and 
looked at me like a maniac, he than sprang upon 
his feet, threw one arm around my neck and 
grabbed my other hand in his and made for the 
door. The snow was deep and the day was very 
cold, but without a pause, out through the door 



92 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

he went, bounding along through the snow. Af- 
ter running a square, I managed to get the man 
stopped, telling him that this was all unnecessary, 
that he could get saved anywhere. Immediately 
he dropped upon his knees saying, "All right, 
we'll seek salvation right here." "Very well," said 
I, "but we must do business quick, we are in a 
frosty atmosphere, and when a fellow has no 
overshoes, overcoat, hat or mittens and the mer- 
cury fourteen degrees below zero, we cannot 
spend much time here." No sooner had I spoken 
these words than the infidel grabbed me again and 
started on the run. We finally reached the Meth- 
odist parsonage where I managed to get my 
man on the inside. Almost every step from the 
time we left the church the infidel was repeating 
the words, "It's the power of God, it's the power 
of God." When we reached the inside of the 
house, I again intreated him to look to Jesus, but 
said he, "Don't talk to me about looking to Jesus. 
I have been an infidel for so long. I must settle 
this question of the existence of a God first. Yes, 
I will have to die, for the same power that 
knocked me down between the seats is still hang- 
ing over me like a dark cloud ready to fall upon 
me and crush out my life. Every joint within 
me is now aching from the awful stroke I re- 



Dragged Through The Snow. 93 

j 

ceived. Brother Hatfield, you had better go back 
to the meeting; you will be needed there; I'll stay 
here and fight this out alone with God. If you 
come back here and find me dead, it will be be- 
cause of my unbelief. Have the Christians to 
pray that God may spare my life and that I 
may believe and be saved." 

I returned to the church where I found the 
power of God manifested in a remarkable way. 
Scores of sinners had swept into the kingdom 
and among them a number of infidels. It was 
after the noon hour, and I happened to raise my 
eyes toward the entrance of the church, and, 
to my delight, who should I see walking in but 
the infidel. He had left the parsonage, but oh, 
what a change ! He had a new face and it was 
covered with smiles. He came rushing down the 
aisle shouting, "Glory! Glory! Glory!" His: 
presence with his experience broke up the meet- 
ing and they all joined in a grand jubilee of 
shouting and praising God until late in the af- 
ternoon. 

Twenty-five years or more have passed since 
that day, and that man has been a true, faithful 
Christian ever since. He has helped us in meet- 
ings, often leaving his business and traveling 
a hundred miles or more to assist me in my work. 



94 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

I have always regarded this man as one of the 
most effective altar workers for a layman that 
I ever knew. 

During this revival I tried for five nights 
in succession to preach from the first Psalm. 
Each night I would open my Bible to this Psalm, 
fully expecting to preach on it, but before the 
time would arrive and I could read my text the 
sermon would vanish, leaving my mind a blank 
as far as preaching on the Psalm was con- 
cerned. Twice I preached from hymns, once 
from God's Word, and at another time exhorted. 
At last, on the last night of the meeting, the 
Lord gave me great liberty on this Psalm. I had 
started in this last week for another hundred 
souls. Up to this closing night ninety had been 
saved. After an earnest exhortation nine more 
came to the altar and were saved. For some 
considerable time both evangelist and people 
labored hard to get that other soul, but all in 
vain. At last I announced we would have anoth- 
er meeting early the next morning before I left 
for my next meeting, and we would look for 
that remaining soul. Morning came and when 



Dragged Through The Snow. 95 

the people had assembled the house was full, 
and I arose and announced that we would sing, 

" There were ninety and nine that safely lay 
In the shelter of the fold. 
But one was out on the hills away, 
Far off from the shepherd's fold." 

Just as the congregation began the song, a man 
by the name of Lamb came running down the 
aisle shouting, "I'm that lamb! I'm that lamb! 
I was saved this morning at five o'clock. All 
night long I could hear nothing but the words 
of the first Psalm ringing through my ears, and 
especially the words, 'Standing in the way of sin- 
ners and sitting in the seat of the scornful/ 
This was the first time I had attended the meet- 
ing, and it seemed that every word the preach- 
er said was for me, and I wondered who had 
been telling him so much about me, but it put 
me under such conviction I could not sleep, until 
in the after part of the night I got up and had 
my wife get up and pray for me, then sent for 
s'ome of the neighbors, and at five o'clock I 
prayed through and Jesus saved me." Hence 
the importance of obeying the leadings of the 
Spirit in our preaching. If I had preached that 
sermon anv other time, I never would have eot- 



96 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

ten that man, but God knew when he was going 
to be there, and when he did come He wanted 
this sermon for him, and he got it. 



CHAPTER XL 

Irate Class-^ad^r Subdued by A Drunkard. 

I entered a certain town late one evening 
in response to an invitation to conduct a meet- 
ing. Both pastor and people were absolute 
strangers to me. Upon arrival I was taken at 
once to the church where the meeting was to be 
conducted, and, in due time, I read my text and 
began to preach. During my sermon, in an in- 
imitable manner, I pictured the cold, formal man- 
ner of many church-members, and prayed a very 
ridiculous solemn mock prayer. All unknown to 
me, there was present an old class-leader, who 
tallied almost identically with the word picture 
I had drawn. In fact, after the service, a num- 
ber of people told me I could not have imitated 
the class-leader more accurately had known 
him well. There was also present a local 
preacher of the same type. The class-leader had 
his own old dry prayer that he had been repeat- 
ing "nigh on ter forty years.," and the local 
preacher had an old dry sermon that he had 

97 



98 Thirty-three; Years a Live Wire. 

been preaching, from different texts, for about 
the same length of time. These two officials 
were not long getting on their habiliments of 
warfare, and preparing for fight. They gave 
every evidence that the "old man" was not dead. 
They reminded me of a horse with his ears laid 
back or a mule with his heels in the air. They 
declared that the pastor had informed me and 
there was no need of denying it. With all their 
feeble power they were opposing the meeting. 
Their opposition was about as effective as a lit- 
tle dog barking at the moon. 

Each service I was drawing the lines tighter 
and tighter, and bearing down harder and closer. 
Shoes got to fitting so closely and pinching so 
hard by the end of the week, that the class-lead- 
er could contain himself no longer, so, early one 
morning, he ventured into the parsonage to tell 
the preacher "just what he thought of him." 
I was sleeping in an adjoining room when the 
class-leader entered. At once the preacher 
detected that the man was enraged. 

The class-leader opened up the subject in a 
mild way to the pastor. As soon as possible I 
dressed and entered the room. I tried to reason 
with the man, but he became so furious that this 
was altogether out of the question. I did my 



Irate Class-leader Subdued. 99 

utmost to pacify him, but in return got nothing 
but abuse. Just at this juncture in the un- 
pleasant situation, there sounded a knock at the 
door and the pastor's wife admitted a stagger- 
ing drunkard. The man fell into a chair and 
began to relate a very sad story regarding his 
miserable life. He said he had called to see me, 
that he had been a drunkard all his life and 
had not drawn a sober breath for twenty years. 
He said he -had a good wife and four nice chil- 
dren, but that they had little to wear and noth- 
ing to eat and were then at home hungry. He 
drew his wages the night before and had spent 
every cent at the saloon. He had been at the 
church the previous evening and heard the 
preacher say that salvation was better for a 
drunkard than the Keely Cure, and he had come 
to inquire about the matter. All the time the 
poor fellow Was telling his pathetic story he 
wept bitterly. The touching tale got hold of 
the old class-leader's very heartstrings and he, 
too, began to weep. Then he began to exhort 
the man to give his heart to God. He said, 
"Jack, I've been praying for you for over twenty 
years, and I want to see you saved." The drunk- 
ard abruptly turned upon the class-leader and 
told him to shut his mouth. He said, "You have 



ioo Thirty-three; Years a Live Wire. 

no more influence with me than a yellow dog, and 
I don't want to hear anything out of you. You 
know you lie when you say you have been pray- 
ing for me for over twenty years. You have 
never in all of these years said a word to me about 
my soul. You've been fighting this meeting and 
doing all you can to injure this man, who is doing 
his best to get people saved. You have been so 
mad that you haven't prayed a prayer for a week, 
and right now you have more hatred in your 
heart than I have whisky in my stomach. You 
are as much on your way to Hell as I am, even 
though you are a Methodist class-leader, and I 
don't want to hear you talk to me unless you are 
willing to confess your sins like any other sinner, 
and go to the altar and get saved." 

This rebuke came upon the class-leader like 
a thunder-bolt from a clear sky. It staggered 
the old man momentarily, but he soon regained 
enough composure and sufficient magnanimity, 
to take the drunkard by the hand and say, "Jack, 
you are right and I am wrong. I promise you 
right here that if you will go to the altar to-night, 
I'll go with you and we will both get right with 
God." The two men agreed. I think I narrow- 
ly escaped a licking, and, true to their promise, 
each was at the altar. Their influence upon the 



Iratk Class-ldaddr Subdued. ioi 

congregation caused a wave of conviction to 
strike many hearts, hitherto only awakened, and 
the opposition melted away like the morning dew. 
Over 150 souls were brightly converted, and a 
goodly number obtained the blessing of entire 
sanctification. 



CHAPTER XII. 
A Noisy Service. 

One of the nominal church's most oft-repeated 
criticisms against the Holiness people is that they 
are too noisy. One of the things that the Holi- 
ness people depreciate about the nominal church 
is that she is generally too dead to make a joyful 
noise unto the Lord. "Hark! from the tomb a 
doleful sound," is the song they sometimes ap- 
propriately sing. 

The writer was holding a meeting once in a 
United Brethren church. He was also engaged 
to hoid a meeting for an Evangelical preacher 
just .four miles up the road from the U. B. 
church. We were having a great time. The 
Saturday night before we closed on Sunday, the 
Evangelical preacher came down to the meeting. 
It was something unusual for him; it was more 
than he had contracted for, but he had us on his 
hands and there was^ no getting rid of me. In 
order to prepare his people for my coming, the 
next Sabbath morning he took for his text, "The 

1 02 



A Noisy Service. 103 

still small voice." The next Monday night I 
was on hand to assist the Evangelical preacher. 
The following Wednesday he was at the altar. 
God so marvelously filled him with the Holy 
Ghost that he yelled and jumped for a quarter 
of an hour, and then grabbed up his hat and ran 
down the aisle and downstairs and down the 
street for two squares yelling at the top of his 
voice. This was fuel to the fire, and in a few 
days the whole church was aflame and the re- 
sult was over three hundred conversions and 
many sanctified wholly. 

The arguments of the opposers of spiritual 
joy are no arguments at all. They are without 
foundation in either reason or revelation. The 
objectors ignorantly affirm that "still water runs 
deep." Now the truth is, still water does not 
run at all — and neither do they. Still water 
breeds tadpoles, toads, mosquitoes, malaria and 
death, and these people breed the spiritual dearth 
and death of which these things are a type. 

There was one old Quaker brother who was 
greatly stirred over an enthusiastic meeting, and 
after it had quieted down somewhat, arose and, 
in a very solemn way, said, "Brethren, I believe 
in being full, but I do object to this overrun- 
ning. For forty years I have been a member 



104 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

of this church and my tank *has always been 
full, but I have never allowed it to run over." 
A little boy sitting by his mother's side on the 
front seat jumped to his feet and, in an excited 
way, said, "Uncle, if your tank has not run over 
in forty years, I'll bet you it's got wiggle-tails 
in it." 

In one of my meetings all the talk seemed to 
be, "Too much noise! Too much noise !" The 
fact was, nobody was making any noise except 
myself and I was making comparatively little 
for me. There was but one man in the church 
who would pray, and he was as dry as the Kan- 
sas plains. He prayed so low and slow that we 
hardly knew when he started or when he ended. 
I would wait until I thought the brother had 
gone long enough and then say "Amen" for him, 
and arise and begin singing. The attendance 
was large and the interest good, but nobody 
was getting saved ; however, conviction was settl- 
ing upon the people. Many of the people be- 
came more and more severe in their criticism 
upon the noise, so I concluded that if they did 
not like a little of a good thing I would give 
them an extra supply. 

One Sunday night I made up my mind that 
the time had come when something - heroic had to 



A Noisy Service. 105 

be done, and noise seemed to be the bone of 
contention that was in the way of the meeting. 
I delivered my message and offered the altar, 
but no one responded. I sang a few songs and 
then by very persistent effort, I succeeded in 
getting four church-members out to the front 
for a season of prayer. They would not kneel 
at the altar, but fell down beside a front seat. 
I turned to the congregation and said, "Now, 
sinners, watch closely, for we are going on our 
knees for victory and we will remain here until 
morning if we don't get it before, and I want 
you to keep your eyes upon these church-mem- 
bers and the one that gets up first you spot 
him as a hypocrite." I made a long and noisy 
prayer and then* gave an exhortation and asked 
someone else to lead in prayer. Nobody prayed. 
I then made another prayer and followed it up 
with another exhortation. I kept this up, al- 
ternating between prayer and exhortation, until 
eleven o'clock. Finally, the old, slow brother 
began to quickly pray. I kept crying out all the 
time, "Victory is coming! Victory is coming !" 
Just then, to my great satisfaction, I observed 
two Spirit-filled converts of a former meeting 
entering the church. They had attended their 
home prayer-meeting in an adjoining town and 



106 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

had been led to drive to the meeting afterward. 
They were very noisy fellows. I motioned for 
them to come to the front and they readily re- 
sponded. 

When they reached the altar, I said, in a low 
tone, "Boys, I'm glad to see you. God has sent 
you here to make a noise. Noise is the thing that 
is needed here now, and I want you to make 
all of that you can. Holler, clap your hands, 
stamp your feet and pound the mourner's-bench 
and I'll join you." At once the racket began. 
It took the people by surprise. It startled the 
congregation and especially the old brother en- 
gaged in prayer. He pitched his prayer about 
three times as loud and began to wax warm. 
I leaped from the altar into the rostrum and 
found the pastor .behind the pulpit trembling 
from head to foot with fear as if the world was 
coming to an end. I said, "Brother S — , this 
is the chance of our life for this meeting. 
Get out here quick and help us make a noise." 
The preacher joined in and the congregation 
looked still more astonished. By this time the 
old brother had reached a high pitch. He was 
beating the air and frothing at the mouth and 
was praying loud enough to be heard a block 
away. 



A Noisy Service. 107 

Presently a man was observed standing in 
the aisle weeping. He was invited to the altar, 
and he did not require any coaxing. He fell 
on his knees and began praying at the top of his 
voice, and was soon converted. He sprang to 
his feet and rushed down the aisle and soon 
brought another person to the altar who was 
also quickly converted. In about thirty minutes 
from that time there were seventeen at the altar 
and all gave evidence of having received a def- 
inite experience of conversion. 

Among the converts was a small boy about 
eight years old. This lad had a drunken farlier 
who had often abused him in a shameful man- 
ner and the man was present at the service. 
As soon as the boy was saved he rushed back 
to tell his father and ask him to come to Jesus 
and get saved. The father resented the lad's 
advances and entreaties and shoved him away 
several times, but the boy was persistent in his 
efforts and continued pressing his claims that 
his father must give his heart to God. At last 
the boy got his arms around his father's neck 
and wept over him until he broke the old drunk- 
ard's heart; and he came to the altar with the 
child still clinging to him, weeping and praying 
with all his miglit. He would climb upon his 



108 Thirty-thr££ Y^ars a Liv£ Wir£ 

father's back and pray with all his strength 
for God to save papa. The Lord .answered the 
boy's prayer and soon the father rose to his 
feet, with the child still clinging to his neck, 
wonderfully saved. As he left the church that 
night, I heard the people saying, "This reminds 
us of old times. This is the way our fathers and 
mothers used to do." This service settled the 
criticism of "Too much noise." There were 
over one hundred saved in this meeting and many 
of the critics were saved and sanctified and 
united with the church. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Drastic Measures. 

One time in the city of Chicago, I was one 
of a large corps of evangelists laboring in a big 
Holiness convention. As many as a thousand 
people or more often crowded into the large audi- 
torium, and at times there would be in attendance 
over two hundred Holiness preachers. Among 
the hundreds of seeking sinners who bowed at 
the altar, there was a certain woman who had 
been seeking the experience of entire sanctifica- 
tion. When she attended the services the preach- 
ers knew there would be at least one response to 
the altar call. The Holy Spirit revealed to them 
that pride was the barrier between the woman 
and victory. She would kneel at the altar just 
so ; pat her bangs, arrange her clothes, cross her 
hands, bow her head, and she was there to stay. 
Nobody could induce her to lift her head or offer 
a prayer aloud, and yet, she seemed very hungry 
ifor the experience. 

During the closing moments of one of the 
109 



no Thirty-thre;^ Y^ars a Live: Wir£. 

services, while the congregation was standing 
and singing and the woman was still kneeling at 
the altar, I was engaged in earnest prayer for 
her sanctification. At once the Spirit of God 
fell upon me and I grasped the woman by the 
arm and began to shake her violently. I shook 
the flowers out of her hat, and her hat off of her 
head and her shawl from her shoulders, her hair 
came down, and the hairpins flew out, and the 
poor woman was exceedingly humiliated to be 
thus shaken in the presence of one thousand eye- 
gazers. She showed her humiliation in her face, 
but had lost her handkerchief and was unable to 
control it. Her husband was present and, be- 
ing unable to endure seeing his wife so roughly 
handled, he leaped from his seat, and in his rage, 
made for me. His eyes were flashing angrily and 
it was very evident that he purposed to dust the 
carpet with me. Just as the irate husband was 
about to pounce upon me, the pentecostal wave 
struck the woman; she leaped into the air about 
two feet, and with extended arms and a scream 
similar to that of a Comanchee Indian, she 
made for her husband. The place suddenly got 
too hot for him and he turned on his heel and ran 
down the aisle and out of the door, while his 
wife took the rostrum and walked back and forth 



Drastic Measures. hi 

with her face all radiant with glory, shouting 
and praising God, and thanking the preacher for 
shaking the devil of pride out of her and getting 
her loosened up from her stiffness, so that she 
could be enabled to lay hold on God for victory. 
At another time I was conducting a tent 
meeting in the suburbs of a large city. As many 
as a thousand or fifteen hundred people attended 
the services. The people stubbornly refused to 
act upon any proposition and I was in a great 
dilemma. Saturday night I had another preach- 
er deliver the message, after which I followed 
with an exhortation. I made several proposi- 
tions without effect, and then I fell upon my 
knees in the straw and offered a strong, earnest 
prayer to God, that He might break things up 
some way. I arose and exhorted the people 
again, but with no better effect. Again I kneeled 
in prayer and arose and exhorted the people, 
but all in vain. At last I told the Lord I could 
do no more, that man's extremity was God's op- 
portunity, and unless He helped me nothing could 
ever be done, and I was now fully depending 
upon Him, and I would gladly pursue any course 
He ordered. Immediately the Spirit said, 
"Arise, and drive all the church-members out of 
the tent." I sprang to my feet and asked all 



ii2 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

the church-members of every denomination to 
stand upon their feet. About four hundred 
arose. "Now," said I, "the Lord wants you out 
of this tent and you must get out at once." 
After some considerable effort (and it certainly 
did take nerve), at last I succeeded in driving 
them out. I reminded them of the fact that the tent 
belonged to me, and the lot upon which it was 
pitched was mine for ten days, and I had the 
authority to say who should stay ther.e and who 
should not. 

After I had cleared the tent of church-mem- 
bers I turned to" the preachers and asked them 
to take a position at the rear of the platform, 
then I stepped upon the altar and said, "Now 
if there is anyone th'at wants to see a real break 
in this meeting and you desire to be saved to- 
night come at once and give me your hand." 
Responsive to the call, there was a rush of sin- 
ners to the front and soon all of the altar space 
was crowded with penitent souls. The Spirit 
of the Lord fell upon the Christians who had 
been driven out, and they came rushing back 
into the tent shouting God's praises. Some of 
the preachers shouted so as to be heard nearly 
a mile away. Some of the "immovables" on their 
way home heard the shouting and came back 



Drastic Measures. 113 

on the run, but were too late to get in the way 
of the meeting, but just in time to see the fire 
work. When the Holy Spirit can have His way 
something is going to happen. Sometimes it 
seems a daring adventure to obey Him, but I 
have always found Him a present help in time 
of need. 

During another meeting, while I was work- 
ing out among the congregation, I approached a 
young lady who was a beautiful singer. She was 
holding her. head proudly and singing with all 
her might. I asked her several questions, but 
she continued to sing without making any reply. 
I observed a cunning smile playing over her 
features and detected that her seeming indiffer- 
ence to all my questions was all a bluff. At last 
I pointed my finger at her, looked her squarely 
in the face and said, "Go on if you want to, sing 
your soul into Hell and be damned, for you are 
doing that very thing." After taking a few 
steps down the aisle, I turned to see how the 
young woman was taking my sharp rebuke, and, 
there she was making a bee-line for the altar. 
She was soon converted and within a few weeks 
sought and obtained the experience of entire 
sanctification. She received a call to preach the 
Gospel and soon entered the evangelistic field, 



ii4 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

and became a very successful winner of souls. 
She was a marvel to the people who knew her, 
so mighty was she in preaching the Word of 
God. She afterward told me that it was my sharp 
words that awakened her; that she was hard- 
hearted and wicked and had no thought of ever 
becoming a Christian, but those words, coming 
so sharp and keen, went to her heart like a knife 
and it frightened her. Instantly conviction 
seized her and she said, "If ever I'm saved, it 
must be now," and at once surrendered her will 
and started to the altar where God, in great 
mercy, pardoned her sins. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
Humorous Happenings. 

Intermingled with pathetic and almost heart- 
breaking scenes, in an evangelistic experience, 
are many of a very humorous character. This 
is more or less true of all evangelists. Were it 
not for the eternal issues involved and the con- 
summation of many incidents transpiring 
through my busy life, this book could be easily 
changed into a series of exceedingly humorous 
sketches. 

I have conducted several revival meetings in 
which people have gone into trances; especially, 
in a certain neighborhood where I labored a con- 
siderable time, where there were a great num- 
ber thus affected. Some would fall to the floor 
and lie perfectly rigid, some would roll about 
as though in great agony, some would see visions 
and great things to relate, some would walk 
about the church, others would stand erect in 
one place for hours, some would sing, others 
would laugh, and yet others would engage in 

115 



n6 Thirty-thr££ Years a Live: Wire. 

conversation. In this neighborhood I conducted 
three meetings covering a period of seven weeks, 
and I saw about six hundred converted and a 
large number sanctified. On account of the pe- 
culiar and unusual deportment of those falling 
under the power of God, I was accused of being a 
hypnotist and a mesmerist. Some said it was 
the power of the devil, and others declared it 
was of God. Some would refuse to shake hands 
with me through fear of this power. In a great 
spiritual glee one day I grabbed an old sinner 
by the hand to shake hands with him, instantly 
he jerked his hand away and said, "You keep 
your hands off of me, don't you touch me again." 
Others would run when they saw me approach- 
ing. Some refused to come to town and even 
did without their much-desired tobacco, for fear 
of the "trance man." There were others who 
wanted a trance and would stand around me 
hoping to fall under the power. 

The second day during the third meeting in 
the neighborhood there was a young lady driving 
down the road toward town. She had never 
seen me nor attended any of the meetings, but had 
heard many things about me and my reputed mar- 
velous power. As she was driving along she met 
her uncle, who was a doctor and a very mis- 



Humorous Happenings. 117 

chievous fellow, always ready, at any sacrifice 
of truth, to play a prank. The young woman 
said, "Uncle, has that man come yet?" "Oh, 
yes," said the doctor, "he came last night and 
held his first service." "Now, uncle," said the 
young woman, "I want you to tell me the truth ; 
is that man what the people say he is ?" "Oh," 
replied the doctor, "the half has never been told, 
he is the most remarkable person I have ever 
seen. He has no equal. He possesses the 
power of God, everything bows and moves at his 
will. He had the people under such power last 
night that they could not move from their seats. 
He placed his hand on the pulpit and it spun 
around like a top. He spoke to the bell and it 
began to ring. He walked down the aisle and 
all the seats in the house began to rock 
back and forth. He approached the stove 
and thrust both hands over it and it began to 
waltz around over the house. He glanced up 
toward the chandelier and simply blew his breath 
against it, and it began to move up and down." 
"Oh, hush, Uncle," said the frightened girl, 
with her eyes bulging out like two buckeyes in 
a bowl of clabber milk. "That's mesmerism and 
I won't go another step; I shall turn around 
and drive right back home." 



n8 Thirty-threu Years a Live Wire:. 

After great effort and much persuasion, the 
physician finally succeeded in getting her to drive 
on to his house. When she arrived she found 
me there. I was introduced to her, she was 
quite nervous. After a short call she went away 
and told her folks that she could see nothing very 
extraordinary about that evangelist, that he was 
nothing but a man, and he seemed to be a very 
ordinary one at that. 

On another occasion, and during another re- 
vival meeting, there attended the service an el- 
derly woman who always occupied the front 
seat. She sat there under the straight Gospel 
preaching that I was dealing out from the plat- 
form, with an expression of disdain and devil- 
possessed contempt. She had disturbed the meet- 
ing and had interrupted me until I thought she 
had exceeded the limit, so I made up my mind 
to "fire her out." The next night she was back 
on her roost at her old tricks. I was preaching, 
but stopped, and with a sharp look and a com- 
manding voice I said, "Old sister, you pick up 
your lantern, and take your old bonnet, and walk 
your dead carcass out of this house, and move at 
once/' She very quickly obeyed orders, but 
first went to her husband and asked him to go 
home with her, but he refused, then she went 



Humorous Happenings. 119 

to her children, but they also refused to accom- 
pany her, so she started out alone. When she 
reached home, just as she opened the door and 
stepped within the house, a gust of wind banged 
the door shut and extinguished her light. She 
was a great coward and at once became weak 
with fright. In this terrified state she could 
neither find a match to light her lantern nor the 
door through which to escape from the house. 
She next conceived the idea that the devil was in 
the room and after her. She became frantic and 
began to scream and cry. Then, there being no 
other refuge, in her distress she began to pray 
with all her strength. She told God she would 
never again oppose the preacher and confessed 
her sins and at last was reclaimed. Just about 
the time the Spirit fell upon her, the husband 
and children arrived from the church. It was 
like walking into a cyclone. The woman had 
been so wonderfully saved and blessed that she 
was running around the room shouting God's 
praises. Her joyful experience was too much 
for the husband and children; they, too, began 
to pray and all got blessed. The next night 
when they made their appearance at the service, 
they set the meeting on fire, and from that hour 
the meeting swept on with victory in every ser- 



120 Thirty-three Years a Live WirE. 

vice. "God moves in a mysterious way His won- 
ders to perform," so He used on "old dead" 
church-member, who was "fired out" of church 
for her misbehavior, "fighting holiness," to pre- 
cipitate a revival in that community. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Experiences Both Humorous and Pathetic. 

It was a very common thing for persons seek- 
ing the Lord to desire and seek an experience 
similar to that of somebody else. There was a 
man who wanted a shouting experience. Every 
service he would kneel at the altar and pray with 
all his might for God to give him such a bless- 
ing as would cause him to shout. The Lord was 
blessing him right along. He would get very 
happy and shake hands all over the congrega- 
tion, and he was instrumental in leading many 
souls* to the altar, and yet, the first invitation 
given at the next service, he would kneel with 
the penitents and pray for God to give him a 
yelling blessing. One day I said to him, "Broth- 
er B — , does not God satisfy your soul?" He 
answered that God had greatly blessed him, but 
he wanted to be blessed until he "just must yell." 
I replied, "Brother B — , you may get more 
of that some of these days than you want." 
One day I heard a scream that made the church 

121 



122 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

ring, and looking out upon the congregation, I 
beheld the man who wanted to yell. He had re- 
ceived what he wanted. He screamed, and 
screamed, and screamed; he yelled, and yelled, 
and yelled. For a time the brother's cries sound- 
ed very laughable, and we all joined him and en- 
joyed it, but, ere long, the poor fellow's condi- 
tion became serious. He screamed until he be- 
came very weak with the strain. He tried very 
hard to stop, but was powerless to do so. Finally 
he took a cramp in his side which caused him 
great agony. He was laid out upon the seat and 
friends did their utmost to stop his cries, but ut- 
terly failed. The man's condition became so 
serious that at length the people went to prayer 
and asked God to stay His hand, and the Lord 
answered prayer and the man was relieved, and 
from that day until this he has never felt like 
asking the Lord to repeat the experience. 

This man's experience should teach us a great 
lesson. We should never tempt God by insisting 
upon His gratifying our whims. God has prom- 
ised to supply all of our needs, but He has never 
said He would our notions, and if we do insist 
upon God's supplying our whims and notions, 
we do so at our peril. 

Another very peculiar incident occurred in 



Humorous and Pathetic. 123 

• 
another revival meeting. An aged German lady 

had attended the services very faithfully and one 
day was brightly converted. She was very hap- 
py over the new-found treasure. She went home 
and related her wonderful experience to her hus- 
band, who had not attended any of the services. 
When the old German heard his wife tell what 
the Lord had done for her, he became hungry 
for an experience that would make him happy 
too. On a certain day the old lady was seen 
coming to church leading her husband by the 
hand. She directed him to the front seat where 
he listened most attentively while the Word was 
preached. At the close of the sermon when the 
altar call was made the old lady took her hus- 
band's hand and led him to the altar, where he 
kneeled and buried his face in his hands. The 
old lady stepped back and looked very critically 
at her husband, and his exact position at the al- 
tar, then she said, brokenly, "Shust about nine 
inches to the north, Shames." The old gentle- 
man immediately removed the required distance 
and the old lady said, "Dat will do, Shames." 
The old man at once arose and said, "I haf got 
Him ! I haf got Him ! Shesus saves me. Praise 
te Lort !" Undoubtedly the old lady had ac- 
quainted her husband with the minutest details 



124 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

of her conversion and she had instructed him to 
kneel in the identical position and location where 
she- had received the blessing. In simple, child- 
like faith, the old gentleman followed directions, 
and, sure enough, God blessed his soul. 

At another time while I was conducting ser- 
vices in southern Indiana, some boys found a 
drunken man, and for the mischief of it, they 
brought him to the church and threw him in at 
the door. Some of the brethren hurried back 
to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. After 
they had probed the drunkard to learn his feel- 
ings upon the subject of religion, they concluded 
to take him to the altar. With much difficulty 
they succeeded in getting the man forward and, 
after much prayer and personal dealing he was 
able to lay hold on the promises and trust God 
for salvation. As soon as he was saved he was 
sobered up instantly. He sprang to his feet and 
began to shake hands, saying in broken English, 
"I vas saved, I vas saved." The following day 
while giving in his experience, while the pastor 
was leading the service, he said, "I vas con, con, 
con, con, con, Brother Shones, vat vas dat?" 
"You were converted," replied the pastor. "Oh, 
yes, I vas converted. I takes Shesus und 
Shesus takes me. Ven a Dutchman starts he 



Humorous and Pathetic. 125 

never turns, back. I goes on." This man was a 
faithful Christian during the entire meeting. A 
letter was received some time later from the pas- 
tor stating that the man was still faithful, and 
that he had fallen heir to a large estate in the 
old country, which he expected to use for the 
cause of Christ. After the meeting closed I was 
leaving for the train, the German approached me 
saying, "Brother Hatfield, I vants to tank you 
for saving my soul, but I tanks Shesus mour." 
While I was engaged in a meeting in north- 
ern Illinois, I had a very interesting experience 
with an irate father and mother. Neither of 
these people would weigh a hundred pounds. 
They were both dried-up, mean and miserly. 
They had an only daughter of tremendous pro- 
portions. She tipped the scales at 365 pounds. 
One day at a morning service, this corpulent 
daughter presented herself at the altar as a candi- 
date for salvation. There had been trouble be- 
tween the young woman and her parents and af- 
ter she had sought a long time without obtaining 
the victory, a young man, familiar with the fam- 
ily and the circumstances of the estrangement, 
concluded that he would go down to her father's 
store and have him come up to the church for 
possible reconciliation. As soon as the young 



126 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

man made known his mission to the father, the 
old man flew into a rage and swore he would go 
up to the church and shoot the brains out of the 
preacher conducting the meeting. The man ran 
into his house after his revolver and ordered his 
wife to come along, and they started for the 
church. I was on my knees, instructing the seek- 
ers, when suddenly the door was thrown open 
and the man and woman came down the aisle 
talking loudly and using indecent language. 
They rushed upon the daughter and laid hold up- 
on each of her ponderous arms and said, "My 
lady, we will take you home. ,, They tried to 
lift the girl, but she, with her 365 pounds avoir- 
dupois, was as limp as a rag, and yank, and pull, 
and jerk, as they would, they could not move her. 
Nothing less than a derrick could have accom- 
plished that feat against her will. At last the 
mother stepped back and with her foot kicked 
the girl in the back, said some very sharp words, 
then turned on her heels and rushed out of the 
house. Then the father stepped back, put his 
hand to his hip-pocket as if to draw a pistol, and 
said, "I'll put a stop to this meeting." 

I was suddenly awakened to the fact that 
this thing had gone far enough, so I looked the 
man squarely in the eye and said, "Sir, do you 



Humorous and Pathetic. 127 

know that you have violated the laws of this 
state by interrupting a religious meeting and 
you are now subject to a heavy fine?" The old 
man was so stingy and miserly that the very sug- 
gestion of his conduct costing him anything 
struck like a thunder crash on a winter day. He 
immediatly dropped his head, lowered his voice, 
and said he guessed he had made a mistake and 
was very sorry he had done so. I told him he 
needed salvation to take the wickedness out of 
him. A young convert stepped forward and ask- 
ed him to make things right with his daughter. 
The father humbly replied that he was willing 
to do so. It was not long until the daughter got 
victory in her soul and 365 pounds of righteous- 
ness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost arose to 
her. feet and it was not at all difficult to get the 
father to his knees, but he got no more than he 
was working for and that was to escape from the 
clutches of the law. He promised to return to 
the services, but he never did. He saw his mis- 
take, and in order to escape the fine, being so 
stingy, he was willing to submit to almost any 
measures. Had the daughter been a small wom- 
an the probability is they would have carried her 
out, but her tremendous weight upset all their 
pernicious plans and thus the girl found her Sav- 
ior and went away rejoicing in His love. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Simple, Trusting Faith And Its Fruits. 

There lived in one of the leading cities of 
Indiana a young lady about eighteen years of 
age, who had experienced many hardships dur- 
ing her life. Her mother had died when she was 
a child, the home was broken up and she was 
placed in the home of another family. The girl 
resented the unkindness shown her in this new 
home and soon she left the place. She was driven 
from place to place and at last her father refused 
to help her longer, and she was thrown upon the 
mercies of an indifferent world. In the course 
of time, with a broken and discouraged heart, 
she appealed to her father to keep house again 
and allow her to do the housekeeping. The 
father and the son finally agreed to this plan and 
they were soon comfortably settled in their new 
home. I was conducting revival meetings in the 
city where this family lived, when one day the 
young lady made her way to the altar. After a 
few moments spent in prayer she voluntarily 

128 



SimpIv^ Trusting Faith. 129 

arose, faced the congregation and said, "Jesus 
saves me." 

She attended the service the following day 
and listened attentively as the preacher gave a 
Bible lesson on the subject of entire sanctifica- 
tion as a second work of grace. Again when the 
altar call was made, she went forward and kneel- 
ed in prayer. I asked her if she was not convert- 
ed the day before, and she said, "Oh, yes, I was 
clearly converted. I never was so happy in my 
life, but you told us to-day that there was a sec- 
ond experience that will take all wrong temper 
out of our hearts. I found out yesterday what 
you said about the first experience was true and 
if there is anything better in the second experi- 
ence, I want it." I instructed her in the way of 
consecration and faith, and in a short time the 
young lady arose, turned to the congregation 
and with a modest, happy face said, "Jesus sanc- 
tifies me wholly." 

At the next service the girl again presented 
herself at the altar, and again I asked her what 
she desired of the Lord. She replied, "Jesus 
saves and sanctifies me, but you said to-day that 
every Christian should return thanks at the table 
and I am here for that blessing." After a short 
time she arose and turned to the congregation 



130 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

and declared that she had obtained the blessing 
to say grace at the table. She went home from 
this service and prepared the meal and called her 
father and brother to the table. The brother im- 
mediately helped himself to a biscuit, and the 
father had started to turn his plate when the 
daughter said, "We must thank God for this 
meal before we eat." The father grumbled, the 
brother cursed, but they could neither of them go 
any further with the meal. The father still held 
his plate and the brother his biscuit. "When you 
get quiet," said the girl, "I will return thanks 
and God will not let you eat until I do." And 
neither could they; for God was with the girl. 
At last the father roughly said, "Well, say your 
blessing, and be quick about it, we want to get 
to eating some time." A blessing was asked 
and a victory won. 

The next day the young woman was at the 
altar again. I merely asked her, "What next?" 
"Well," said she, "you said every Christian 
should have family prayer and I am here for that 
blessing." After several minutes had passed she 
arose and told the congregation that she had 
come to the altar for God to give her grace to 
hold family prayers and she said, "God has done 
it." That night when she got home she selected 



Simple, Trusting Faith. . .' 131 

the Scripture and when she saw that her father 
and brother were preparing to retire she said, 
"We will read the Bible and have prayer before 
we retire." The brother had just removed one 
shoe and this he threw at her with an oath. The 
father flew into a rage and threatened to drive 
her out of the house. At length he arose and 
marched out himself. The girl was quietly hold- 
ing her Bible in her hand. Her brother, try as 
he would, could not remove the other shoe, neith- 
er could the father remain long without, but soon 
entered the house again and, after stepping 
around and upsetting chairs and talking loudly 
and angrily, he finally said, "Have your prayers, 
if you must, we want to get to bed some time to- 
night." Whereupon the girl read a chapter, of- 
fered prayer, and won another victory. 

The next day the young lady again bowed at 
the altar. She prayed God to bring her brother 
out to service that night and she soon announced 
to the congregation that God had promised her 
that her brother would attend the service that 
night. Sure enough, that night, side by side, the 
brother and sister walked into church and found 
a seat near the front. When I again called seek- 
ers to the altar the young lady again stepped for- 
ward. She began to pray to God to save her 



132 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

brother. The answer did not come as quickly as 
had the others. She prayed on and on until after 
midnight. The congregation had long been dis- 
missed, only a few having tarried to witness the 
outcome of the young woman's prayer. Some 
advised her to go home and return the next day, 
but she told them they might go if they desired, 
but that she would pray on until God answered. 
She soon became more intense in her cries, and 
then she threw up her hands and with face all 
radiant, she arose and ran to her waiting brother, 
saying, "I have it! I have it! God has answered 
my prayer ; you will be saved to-night." The few 
remaining Christians rallied around the young 
man and did all they could to persuade him to get 
upon his knees, but in vain. He was stubborn 
and sullen and would not move. The sister was 
upon her knees with extended arms and eyes 
fastened apparently upon some far-away object 
and she said not a word. She was apparently 
lost to everything and every one except the Lord. 
At last, weary and sleepy, when all looked so 
hopeless and defeat seemed so certain, her friends 
again advised her to give up for the present. 
"No," she said, "you may all go if you wish, but 
God has promised to save my brother to-night and 
He must do it. If He fails me I will never be- 



Simple, Trusting Faith. 133 

lieve Him again." With this, she broke forth in 
prayer and said, "Lord, you promised me to- 
night that you would save my brother. I took 
you at your word and I still believe you, and in 
Jesus' name I ask you to save him instantly." Im- 
mediately the boy fell upon his knees and began to 
cry for mercy and in a very short time he came 
through with a clear testimony that Jesus saved. 
And soon, arm in arm, the happy pair were home- 
ward bound and both were shouting the praise 
of the One who had verified His promise, "What 
things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe 
that ye receive them, and ye shall have them/' 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A Dangerous Woman. Another Hard Case. 

During an out-door meeting in a beautiful 
sugar grove in central Indiana, God blessed my 
labors in the salvation of a great number of prec- 
ious souls. There were services in which both 
sides of a sixty-five-foot altar were crowded with 
anxious'seekers. This meeting furnished several 
interesting incidents; two were as follow. 

In the course of the meeting, Sabbath day had 
come around and great crowds were thronging 
the grounds. The altar was crowded, and still 
the unsaved were making their way to the front. 
I was looking out upon the great multitude and 
exhorting the people to turn to God and seek 
salvation. As I was surveying the congregation, 
I observed a woman standing near the main aisle, 
and she was weeping. At once the Spirit im- 
pressed me to bring the woman forward to the 
altar. I ran down the aisle and stepped up to 
the woman and asked her if she wanted to be 
saved. She replied that she did and then she turn- 

134 



A Dangerous Woman. 135 

ed to a woman at the end of the seat, as if to say, 
"I will go if you will." I told her to pay no at- 
tention to anybody else, that salvation was a 
personal matter and added, "If you will go, pos- 
sibly this sister will follow." I observed the 
woman at the end of the seat looking at me fierce- 
ly and hatefully, for she was a desperate character 
and it was no trouble to read deviltry in her eye. 
The woman had burned property, whipped her 
husband, and had been in a number of neighbor- 
hood fights and was a terror to everybody that 
knew her. Again I asked the first woman I ap- 
proached if she would not come and go with me 
to the altar, but she replied that she would not go 
without the woman beside her. I then turned to 
the woman of bad reputation and said, "Sister, 
you go with this woman." The woman gave me 
another fierce look and said, "You attend to your 
business and I'll attend to my business." I turn- 
ed to the other woman and said, "Do you mean 
it? Will you come if the other woman does?" 
The woman assured me that she would. "Well," 
said I, "come along, for this woman is going to 
the altar." Thereupon I grasped the savage 
woman on the end of the seat by both arms and 
jerked her out into the aisle and started toward 
the altar with her. It was a desperate struggle. 



136 Thirty-thres Years a Live Wire. 

The woman's strength was marvelous and she 
exerted all of it in resisting me. We tore up the 
sawdust along the aisle like two wild beasts. The 
congregation was terrified. The singing had 
stopped and the people were looking on breath- 
lessly. When we got within about ten feet of the 
altar the woman broke away from me and instead 
of leaping upon me, as everybody expected, to the 
surprise of all, she ran past me and fell screaming 
at the altar. She cried for mercy and in less than 
five minutes heavenly fire struck her, and also 
upon the congregation at the same time, and 
words can scarcely describe the scene that fol- 
lowed. Wave after wave of Divine glory swept 
over all and God vindicated my action before all 
the people. 

There was in attendance at this meeting a 
very influential gentleman who had long declared 
himself a seeker after God. He had bowed at the 
altar, service after service, but could never be 
induced to pray. During this meeting the men 
had retreated to the west side of the grove con- 
tinually, between regular services, for prayer, and 
the ladies had gone to the east side for the same 
purpose. One day the brethren decided among 
themselves that they would put forth a desperate 
effort to get this man through to God, so they 



A Dangerous Woman. 137 

made an arrangement whereby they could get 
him over to prayer-meeting. On a certain day 
the men went over the hill and, as usual, went to 
prayer for God's Spirit upon the meeting. They 
had withdrawn their coats and formed a large 
ring and were laboring with all their strength 
for victory. By pre-arrangement, and all un- 
known to the afore-mentioned seeker, the man 
was led over the hill and, ere he knew what it 
all meant, he found himself surrounded by about 
thirty shirt-sleeved, desperate, determined, pray- 
ing men. The man started to run, but they laid 
hold of him and carried him inside of the circle 
and told him to remove his hat and coat and go 
to praying at once, or they would wear him out 
right there. The man made the best of the situa- 
tion and went to praying as he had never been 
heard to do before. He lifted up his head, his 
hands, his heart, and prayed with all his strength. 
While all this was going on, to add interest to the 
scene, there was a large man running around the 
circle on the outside crying at the top of his voice, 
"Keep off, devil ! Keep off, devil ! Keep off, devil !" 
The noise had attracted the people from all quar- 
ters and all the surrounding trees sheltered the 
onlookers who were afraid to approach too near 
the praying band. At last the seeking man in 



138 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

the center of the group became so desperate that 
he leaped from the ring and made through the 
woods as fast as he could go. The praying men, 
rinding their seeker gone, started after him in 
hot pursuit. The shirt-sleeved runners so fright- 
ened the curiosity seekers that they broke forth 
through the woods in all directions. My only 
brother, who was one of the praying band, and 
very nimble of foot, finally overtook the man on 
the edge of an old rotten brushheap, grasped him 
firmly, and the man was then and there converted 
in his arms. Soon all the praying band were up- 
on the scene and in their delight over the victory, 
they shouted and tramped upon the brushheap 
until it was ground into fragments. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Narrow Escape from a Trashing. 

While conducting a revival in a brick school- 
house at a certain place, I encountered very bitter 
opposition. When it was noised abroad that the 
evangelist was coming, many tried to induce the 
trustees to close the schoolhouse against me, and 
finding this impossible, the opposition circulated 
threatening reports. One woman was anxious 
to furnish the eggs if she could find some one 
mean enough to throw them at the evangelist. 
A certain Methodist class-leader, a Christian (?) 
gentleman (?), announced himself ready to 
thrash the evangelist if he could lure him to his 
home. A few people suddenly got such a re- 
ligious spell as to call the people together for 
special prayer that God would prevent the preach- 
er from coming. For some reason God failed to 
answer their prayer, and upon the appointed day, 
I arrived and opened fire, and without respect of 
persons they got their portion, sinners, backslid- 
ers, hypocrites or cold professors. From the 

139 



140 Thirty-thrss Ydars a Livis WlR£. 

very first the God of battles was with me, the 
heavenly fire came down, the altar was filled and 
many sinners were converted. The news of the 
great meeting spread, the interest increased, the 
crowds packed the house, the fighters became 
more and more angry, conviction deepened, and 
the devil worked industriously enough to keep 
everything interesting. It was a great meeting. 
A few times the meeting ran all night until the 
next morning. I promised a man to go home and 
stay all night with him and as we stepped out of 
the house the sun was coming up in the east. 
Such meetings are what a man of my tempera- 
ment and experience is sure to enjoy. 

All along, the class-leader who had threaten- 
en to thrash me, was endeavoring to get me to 
his house. Two of this man's children had been 
at the altar and a son had been brightly convert- 
ed. At last, one evening after the service, and it 
was a late hour, I, entirely ignorant of the man's! 
wicked intentions, consented to go home with 
him and spend the night. I was invited to a seat 
in an old dilapidated spring wagon drawn by a 
team of poorly fed horses. After driving some 
distance we stopped and layed down a pair of 
bars and drove into a thickly dense wood, and, 
after bumping over roots and the heavy under- 



Narrow Escape; from a Thrashing. 141 

brush, every little bit I would holler out, "Glory 
to God!" But the old gentleman did not have 
much to say, he was as mum as an oyster. Final- 
ly he drove up to a small log cabin where I was to 
spend the night. It was after midnight, and I 
was very tired. I asked to be allowed to retire at 
once, and was taken into a shed-room which 
served the triple purpose of bedroom, dining- 
room and kitchen. I was wet with perspiration, 
had no change of clothes, so I just jumped into 
the old untidy bed, said a very short prayer and 
was soon fast asleep, but within an hour I was 
awakened by a terrific wind storm which blew 
the door in, and the window out, and gave the 
old log cabin a general shaking up. 

After the storm had passed over, the room 
was soon flooded with mosquitoes, and then, as 
another addition to the discomfort of the guest, 
a great dog entered the room through the open 
doorway and spent the remainder of the night 
scratching fleas and scraping his toenails on the 
floor and snapping at mosquitoes. I endeavored 
to keep off the mosquitoes and deaden the noise 
of the dog by covering my head with the bed 
quilt, but the long unused company bed was so 
musty that I could not endure the stench. Along 
about daybreak I went to sleep and procured a lit- 



142 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

tie rest. At last I heard a voice calling me to 
breakfast. I opened my eyes and before me stood 
the mother and daughter. I waited some time 
for them to leave the room, and they remained 
and waited for me to get out of bed, so at last, 
finding they evidently had no intention of leav- 
ing, I decided it must be their custom in that 
house for guests to arrange their toilet before 
the entire family, so "to be in Rome I'll do as 
Rome does/' so I rolled out and prepared for 
breakfast. I ate (or rather undertook to eat) 
alone. Before me were placed the following 
dainty (?) dishes: one dish of melted butter 
(melted by atmospheric heat), three small, tough, 
leathery biscuits, one dish of black stewed dried 
apples, one dish of floating island. I will give 
the recipe of the last-named dish only. Take a 
good-sized piece of exceedingly salty fat side 
meat without lean streaks (be very particular to 
not allow any lean streaks) ; from this cut as 
many thick slices as desired (be sure to have the 
slices thick). Now if you have any grease or 
hog fryings in the house, place a spider and drop 
these in the fat. Before the meat is half done, 
quickly remove it for fear it might be cooked and 
thus spoil it (?). Now pour the entire contents 
of the spider and serve either hot, cold or luke- 



Narrow Escape from a Thrashing. 143 

warm. Salt to taste. The very sight of this meal 
took my appetite, and I was not long tarrying at 
that table. I arose, gathered up my coat, vest, 
'socks and handkerchief and went to the yard to 
hang them in the sun to dry, they still being wet 
with perspiration from the efforts of the past 
night. 

As I was hanging out my clothes, I looked 
across the yard and saw the man of the house 
making toward me. I could readily see that he 
was on the war-path, fully rigged out in his fight- 
ing harness. The angry old backslider opened 
up the conversation by saying, "I'm not feeling 
good this morning." "Well," said I, "backslid- 
ers never do feel good." "You don't mean to 
call me a backslider?" yelled the man. "Certain- 
ly," said I, "from all appearances you are a good 
one." Instantly the frenzied man made for me. 
I had my Bible in my hand, I threw it up and 
quoted some Scripture to him, then I dodged 
around a cherry-tree. Just then the man's wife, 
a little black-eyed, pihched-faced, sharp-nosed 
and chinned woman, ran out of the house with 
her tongue evidently loose at both ends. What 
she was saying cannot be repeated — it was too 
fast for shorthand. The woman joined her hus- 
band in his effort to get hold of me, but I evaded 



144 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

their clutches. It was a lively scene and looked 
as if a crisis must be reached soon. Up under a 
cherry-tree, in a distant part of the yard, the only 
daughter of the house was standing, busily en- 
gaged in churning. She had witnessed the scene 
from the beginning, and now, just as it looked like 
her father would certainly lay hold of me, she 
suddenly dropped the churn-dasher, threw her 
arms over her head and came rushing toward the 
struggling group with her face all aglow, shout- 
ing, "Glory! Glory! Glory! The Lord saves me!" 
The parents looked at their daughter, then at 
each other, and then at me. Tears suddenly fill- 
ed the father's eyes and he, with the greatest 
possible magnanimity, put out his hand and said, 
"Brother Hatfield, forgive me, you are right and 
I am wrong, I am a backslider. I have been mad 
enough to kill you. I brought you home to 
thrash you, but the conversion of my daughter 
has convinced me. I believe you are a man of 
God. You may look for me at the mourner's- 
bench to-night. I am going to get right with 
God." At the service that night, true to his word, 
this man was very penitent and labored hard 
and at last was rewarded by obtaining a clear, 
bright conversion. He became a great shouter, 
and shouting was one of the features of the meet- 
ing that had angered him most. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Three Wonderful Casks of Divine Heaung. 

For thirty-three years, and including the en- 
tire time up to the present of my ministerial life, 
I have been a constant sufferer with nervous 
gastric dyspepsia. One not thus afflicted can 
never realize the great disadvantage to which 
!such. a trouble exposes an evangelist. Rapid, 
loud, intense out-door speaking, singing and 
praying, is a violent strain upon the abdom- 
inal functions. Then such a condition requires 
certain foods daintily and wholesomely prepared. 
An evangelist is called to labor more or less, in 
nearly, if not every, state in the Union. He 
comes in touch with, and labors among, all class- 
es of people. He eats at a thousand tables, served 
in as many different ways. Although, as a rule, 
the entertainment is all that one could reasonably 
desire, the inexperienced would hardly compre- 
hend how often an evangelist is forced to sit at 
a table ladened with unwholesome, carelessly 
prepared, untidily served, almost indigestible 

145 



146 Thirty-thrds Years a Live: Wire. 

foods. The menu of the morning meal given in 
the preceding chapter is one that many evangel- 
ists can testify to having partaken of, and that, 
too, not infrequently. The best relief for acetic 
dyspepsia is a full stomach; the solid food thus 
crowding out the unpleasant acids. Now im- 
agine a person thus afflicted being compelled, 
much of his life, to force into his stomach foods 
entirely unfitted to his need ! When the reader 
has gone through the following long list of "sure 
cures" that I have tried in order to find perma- 
nent relief, he will probably conclude that it is an 
amazing wonder that I am alive to-day. I have 
tried liquids, pills, plasters, electric belts, mussel 
shells, egg shells, chicken gizzards, charcoal, hot 
water, cold water, mineral water, soda water, 
lime water, sulphur water, hard water, soft water, 
Hot Springs mineral water, cold baths, hot baths, 
shower baths, sanitarium treatment, alleopath, 
homeopath, electropath, osteopath, Chinese doc- 
tors, faith cure, Christian Alliance, I have been 
prayed for, prayed over and prayed with for thir- 
ty-three years in almost every state in the Union, 
and I have failed to ever obtain a permanent cure 
from this gastric dyspepsia malady; however, 
through the prayer of faith, I have been instantly 
healed of other diseases, and through the same 



Three; Casks of Divine Healing 147 

means, I have often been temporarily relieved of 
my long standing "thorn in the flesh." I declare 
that it has been through the grace of God and 
the prayers of God's people that I have been 
sustained throughout the hard labors of my min- 
istry. It matters not how much I have suffered 
at other times there have been but very few times 
that God has ever permitted me to suffer in the 
pulpit or during the hours of service. 

I have worked with nearly all the leading 
evangelists and some of them are very healthy 
and strong, yet I have never met the person that 
has been able to work me down. I can stand 
more hours of hard work and do on less hours of 
sleep than any person I have ever met. I am now 
in my sixty-second year, and I am about as active, 
and as full of zeal and push and holy fire as in 
any time in my past life. I have quit taking 
medicine for any permanent cure, I am taking 
Christ for my physician, and while I am not 
healed, I am at present in better condition bodily 
than I have been for years. I am depending- upon 
Him for my daily strength to push the battle un- 
til I hear the glad message, "Well done, good 
and faithful servant, enter thou into the joys of 
thv Lord. Sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and 



148 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

Jacob. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great 
is your reward in Heaven." 

Although I have never been fully healed my- 
self, several remarkable cases of Divine healing 
have occurred under my ministry. 

In a certain town there lived a very excellent 
woman who suffered the misfortune of breaking 
her wrist while escaping from a burning hospital. 
This wrist had grown together as hard and stiff 
as bone can be and for years this woman suffered 
this most inconvenient affliction. I was one time 
invited to the town in which this lady lived, to 
conduct revival services. The meeting was one 
of unusual power and interest. One night I 
preached upon the subject of "fire," and God 
blessed me so greatly that I walked up and down 
the aisles laughing, shouting and weeping. The 
congregation was very obstinate that night, and 
after laboring for some time to induce them to 
seek God, and failing to move them, I dismissed 
them for the night. The message, however, 
weighed heavily upon the hearts of the people. 
Some slept but little, they could think of nothing 
but "fire." Others dreamed of "fire," and it was 
"fire," "fire," with the most of them all night. 

The next day at the morning service the 
house was full. I addressed the people a few 



Three: Casks 6# Divine: Heaung 149 

moments, then offered the altar, and every per- 
son in the house except one person started for the 
mourner's-bench. I saw that they could not all 
get to the altar, so I cried out with a loud voice, 
"Everybody to your knees just where you are, 
the altar is crowded." The aisles and in between 
the seats, everything got quiet, everybody seemed 
to be praying, but in a whisper. Then I made 
another brief talk, after which I added, "If there 
is a person in this house who can say that he or 
she is holy, stand on your feet." A woman in 
the "Amen Corner" arose, put up her hand in a 
humble manner and said, "Holy." As she spoke, 
I felt the power of God coming upon the people. 
I repeated the proposition and another person 
arose, and said, "Holy." By this time still 
greater power was resting upon the people. Once 
again I made the same proposition and another 
person arose, and said, "Holy." Last, but not 
least, the same proposition was again repeated 
and the lady with the stiff wrist, kneeling just in 
front of the pulpit, said, "Lord, if my wrist could 
be made limber, I could say 'Holy/ soul and body, 
and I believe it is Thy will to heal it." Instantly 
the woman felt a sharp pain go through her 
wrist joint; she sprang to her feet and began to 
wave her afflicted hand back and forth and said, 



150 Thirty-thre^ Years a Live Wire. 

"Oh, look here! Oh, look here!" The people 
present were all familiar with her case, and when 
they observed the miraculous cure, they sprang 
to their feet in wonderment and broke forth into 
loud and long praises unto God. The woman 
had children, brothers, sisters and other rela- 
tions present and many of them were there and 
then saved and sanctified. They had mourn- 
er's-benches all over the house and somebody was 
getting saved or sanctified every little bit. It 
was a busy crowd, crying, praying, working, 
shouting, laughing, jumping and singing, and I 
received such a blessing myself, was so rilled that 
I thought I would lose my breath, such an incom- 
ing of the Spirit of God. 

The healed woman's brother was saved and 
sanctified and the divine anointing was so great 
that in his reckless ecstasy he leaped upon the 
rostrum and struck me a terrific blow in the 
back, and then, like a wild man, sprang down the 
aisle giving vent to the fulness of his soul in 
some very amusing ways. Eternity alone can 
tell the results of this marvelous outpouring of 
the Holy Spirit. 

At another time, I was laboring in a com- 
munity where lived a woman in the last stages 
of consumption. Her throat was so raw that 



Three Casks of Divine Healing 151 

every time they swept the house it was neces- 
sary to bandage her mouth and nose to prevent 
the dust from making her cough violently. She 
sent word for me to call upon her. When I ar- 
rived at the home, I found the pale, thin, helpless 
woman sitting in a rocking-chair where 
she had been placed temporarily from the bed 
to which she was confined. Being unable to 
talk aloud she told me in a whisper that she had 
been praying to the Lord about healing and that 
she had been impressed to send for me. I told 
the woman that I believed in Divine healing, 
but did not possess the gift of healing, and did 
not have at any time, any special leadings in her 
case, but would be glad to read passages of Scrip- 
ture bearing upon the subject and also to pray 
for her. I then read the Word and bowed in 
prayer. I had scarcely entered into my prayer 
when the Holy Spirit suggested to me, "If you 
believe, all things are possible/' and I said, "Lord, 
I do believe/' and at once received the gift of 
faith for the woman's healing. I arose, placed 
my hands upon the woman's head and said, "Sis- 
ter, God has inspired faith within me, and His 
Word says where two on earth agree as touch- 
ing anything, it shall be done. Will you agree 
with me and believe that He heals you now?" 



152 Thirty-thrive Years a Live Wire. 

With a radiant and a shining face, she looked 
up and said, "Yes, it's done, He heals me now." 
No sooner had she declared her faith than she 
sprang to her feet and ran across the room shout- 
ing aloud the praises of the Great Physician. 
She tore the flannel bandages from her throat 
and in a clear voice sang several hymns. She 
then made her bed, swept the room and walked 
a good distance to her brother's house to tell 
him the good news of her healing. She came 
to church that night in her brother's carriage and 
throughout the revival proved herself one of the 
most enthusiastic workers. Her infidel doctor, 
who examined her very carefully a few days 
later, marveled at the wonderful cure and ad- 
vised her to retain the Physician who had ac- 
complished it. 

On another occasion a paralytic woman got 
the impression through the Spirit that she could 
be healed. This lady arranged one morning to 
be brought to the service which was in charge 
of myself. As a test of her faith the Holy Spirit 
asked her if she would go into each of the two 
saloons that disgraced the town and there tell 
the story, if God would heal her. Sitting there 
in the chair while the service was progressing, 
the paralyzed woman had quite a struggle to ob- 



Three Cases otf Divine Heaung 153 

tain the consent of her mind to enter those vile 
saloons. At last she settled the question in the 
affirmative, and then, to the utter amazement of 
all her friends, like the lame man healed at the 
Beautiful Gate, she sprang to her feet and ran 
down the aisle, leaping and praising God. True 
to her word, the timid woman that afternoon ent- 
ered each of the two saloons, and in the power 
of God declared the wonders of the cross. 

These are only a few of the many marvelous 
cases of Divine healing that God has permitted 
me to witness. I could not take the space to 
describe all the wonderful cases of Divine cures. 

When Israel in the wilderness 

Did murmur and rebel, 
God's judgments then in fearful might 

Upon the people fell. 
God raised a serpent on a pole, 

And healed them by the way; 
And He who healed in Edom's land, 

Will heal the same to-day. 

When Hezekiah, sick to death, 

Was told he could not live, 
He strongly pleaded with the Lord, 

New lease on life to give. 
God listened to his prayer of faith, 

And healed him right away, 



154 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

And the God who heard and answered prayer, 
Is just the same to-day. 

When out to preach the living Word, 

The Apostles forth were sent, 
Then healing power from the skies 

To each of them was lent. 
The might Divine from Heaven above, 

Through Jesus did display, 
And the God who blessed and sent them out 

"Will heal the same to-day. 

When John and Peter, Spirit-filled, 

Went to the place of prayer; 
And as they neared the temple gate, 

Beheld the lame man there, 
They spake the healing word to him, 

As helpless there he lay, 
And Christ who healed the lame man then 

Will heal the same to-day. 

Then come to Jesus, burdened ones, 

And test His healing power. 
He waits to save and cleanse and heal, 

He will this very hour. 
Yield all to Him, His promise trust 

And look from self away, 
For He who healed in olden times, 

Will heal the same to-day. — M. W. Knapp. 



CHAPTER XX. 
Exposing Satan's Subtil Snares. 

The devil is undoubtedly the most aggressive 
and indefatigable worker in the universe. He 
uses all the subtlety of his masterly mind to de- 
vise snares into which to entrap the very elect. 
If he would only come at us with horns, and 
hoofs, and red, glaring eyes, and say, "I am the 
devil," then the tempted could be prepared to 
resist him, but he comes to us in disguise in a 
thousand forms, and we think he is not within 
a hundred miles from us, when he is right at 
our very dooryard knocking for admittance. 

We are told in the Holy Scriptures, to 
"give no place to the devil," and to "put on the 
whole armor of God" that we might be able 
to stand against the "wiles" of the devil. 
"Wiles," in the Greek, means methods, so do you 
see, the devil is a methodist, and it takes a Meth- 
odist to fight him. The present day affords 
ample demonstration of his ability to capture 
the most useful Christian men and women. He 

155 



156 Thirty-Three Years a Live Wire. 

is not frequenting the saloons to tempt people, 
but he is hunting up the Holiness camp-meetings, 
Holiness churches, Holiness missions, and the 
little Holiness bands, and driving men and 
women, much beloved and very useful in the 
cause of Christ, into harsh, censorious, whole- 
sale denunciation of every one and everything 
that does not dance to their "fiddle," and who 
have not convictions and conceptions in harmony 
with theirs. If I was to dance to every Holiness 
fiddle that I hear, I would soon be lame in both 
legs. While the experience of entire sanctifica- 
tion causes one to assume an attitude aggressive 
and uncompromising toward all that is sinful, 
this experience also will enable one to maintain 
a kind, charitable, forbearing attitude toward 
all not actually sinful, whether "of the sheepfold" 
or not. 

Jesus said, "Other sheep have I, not of this 
fold." How deplorable the state of a man when 
he can only see perfection and purity of motive 
among his own immediate following! They 
carry a spy-glass and in every meeting they go 
to, not of their own, they sit back and look for 
something to criticise, and then go out and find 
fault with the meeting, the leader, and the way 
he runs it. Such conduct is nothing more than 



Exposing Satan's Subtil Snares. 157 

a clear case of backbiting, and one might as well 
go out and commit murder or fornication, for 
they are all classed in the same catalogue to- 
gether. (Rom. 1:29-31.) 

There is the question of water baptism. 
Ever and anon, for generations, the devil has had 
Christians quarreling and backbiting over the 
mode. As if, had the all-wise God considered 
the mode essential, He would have so failed to 
reveal absolutely the proper one to His children 
as to leave them in confusion and bewilderment 
concerning it. On both sides of the water-bap- 
tism controversy there are men of equal honesty, 
wisdom and piety, and they can all prove their 
mode by the Bible to their own satisfaction. 

The "Gift of Tongues/' the "Third Blessing," 
and "Baptism of Fire," are other movements 
that have swept over this country and have 
wrought great havoc among the Holiness people. 
They have brought on divisions and criticisms, 
and sitting in judgment against each other. 
Saints who were once filled with the Spirit and 
"on fire for God," and had love and charity for all, 
are now filled with a sharp, cutting, censorious 
spirit. These are subtle snares of the enemy that 
Satan is using to divide the Holiness people, to get 
them at variance with each other, cause them to 



158 Thirty-three; Years a Live Wire. 

lose their experience and influence and land thou- 
sands of them into a fearful state of backslid- 
ing. Oh ! if the Holiness people could be agreed 
with one mind, and one accord, and stand solidly 
for God, and against sin and the devil, we might 
hope to see the Millennium not far distant 

In order to show more clearly how Satan 
diverts and divides the Christian mind, I will 
devote the remaining pages of this chapter to 
two experiences in my life. While neither ap- 
pears to be sinful or wrong, still, it is clear that 
a man, called of God to the great work of the 
salvation of men, should avoid any digression 
that would hinder him in most effectually pro- 
secuting that work. The responsibilities upon 
us, as "workers together with God" and "am- 
bassadors of Jesus Christ," are incalculably 
great, and in order to discharge these responsi- 
bilities to His satisfaction, it requires our purest 
and completest preparation, determination and 
devotion. 

I was in charge of a camp-meeting in a very 
beautiful region in northwestern Indiana. Our 
meeting was held in a fine grove of valuable tim- 
ber. In past years I had dealt in timber and 
consequently had gained some knowledge of the 
business. I have always been a great admirer 



Exposing Satan's Subtle Snares. 159 

of fine timber and I noticed, during this camp- 
meeting, as often as I went into the woods to 
pray, that there were a great many fine trees 
that would make valuable lumber. We were 
having an excellent meeting. God was bless- 
ing and saving souls, but every time I went into 
the woods for prayer I would have my eye on 
that timber. 

One day I entered into conversation with the 
owner of the land and asked him his price for 
the place. He made me an ofifer that put me 
to thinking at once. I told him that I would 
like to own a piece of land and might buy it 
if I could get the money. The gentleman was 
very anxious to sell the place and offered me 
good time if I would purchase it. I told him 
I would consider the proposition and let him 
know in a few days. The next morning I was 
up at daybreak and walked those woods over 
and counted every tree of any value. I measured 
each tree, made my calculations, and found out 
about how many feet of lumber the woods con- 
tained. I then wrote to a mill man at Indian- 
apolis asking him what he would pay for a cer- 
tain class of timber standing in the wood. He 
replied at once sending me his prices, and I saw 
that I could sell the timber without touching 



160 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

it myself, clear and pasture the land, which was 
worth about fifty dollars per acre, and have 
money left. I confess that while I had that 
camp-meeting upon my hands and was preach- 
ing two or three times a day, I also bad a lot 
of sawlogs on my. hands that were giving me 
greater concern than the meeting. I concluded 
to close the deal. The last day of the meeting 
had come and I invited the pastor, a Methodist 
preacher, to accompany me to the woods for a 
season of prayer. We went out and kneeled 
down and prayed first with a great deal of fer- 
vency, then the pastor prayed, and while he was 
praying I looked up and, behold! fust in front 
of me was a fine large tree. I looked up and 
down the tree and then said to myself, "That 
tree will make about three cuts." Just then the 
Holy Spirit said, "Did I call you to transact busi- 
ness or to preach the Gospel?" I replied, "Lord, 
to preach Thy Word, and I am done with this 
trade right now." The trade would have been 
honorable and legitimate, but if I had made it 
I might have become worldly minded and anx- 
ious for other bargains and thus lost my ex- 
perience. 

I remember one time when I was closing up 
a great revival meeting. It was the last night 



Exposing Satan's Subtle: Snares. 161 

and as I was going to church in the evening I 
prayed all along the way for a suitable message 
for the evening, and by time to preach, the Lord 
had given me a text. I had unusual liberty in 
preaching and when the altar call was made, 
to the surprise of all, the altar was filled with 
seeking sinners. I at once began to instruct the 
seekers, was much in the Spirit; we were hav- 
ing a good time and souls were getting saved. 
At last a doctor, who was sitting upon the front 
seat, kept pulling at my coat while I was work- 
ing with those at the altar. I turned and en- 
quired what he wanted, and he said, "Nothing 
much, only I wanted to say that was the biggest 
sermon I ever heard from a one-horse preacher. ,, 
I made no reply to the flattery, but turned to 
instruct the remaining seekers. Immediately the 
devil said to me, "That was a pretty good ser- 
mon." At once I seemed to pass under a cloud 
and I found I had lost my liberty in instruct- 
ing the seekers. I went up into the pulpit and 
prayed to be delivered from the temptation, and, 
supposing it was gone, I went back to the seek- 
ers only to find that it was still with me. I went 
to the pulpit and prayed the second time for de- 
liverance, got a blessing, and again returned to 
the altar, but the same temptation was still be- 



1 62 Thirty-three; Years a Live Wire. 

fore me. Again I returned to my place of 
prayer and, in desperation, I told God if He did 
not deliver me I would close the meeting if every 
seeker went to Hell. That settled the devil on 
that scene. I obtained the victory, and have 
never been troubled on that line since. It is vi- 
tally important, after one has done the best he 
knows and has been blessed with seekers, to truly 
and sincerely say, "Lord, notwithstanding all 
this, I am an unprofitable servant." 



CHAPTER XXL 

How An Entire Family of Seven Were 
Saved. A Faithtui, Elder's Reward. 

Among the many seekers who presented them- 
selves at the altar in this particular meeting was 
a young lady who was very much concerned about 
her soul At times she agonized with great in- 
tensity, but failed of obtaining the victory and 
blessing she sought. I was anxious to help her 
through, but I was satisfied in my own mind there 
was something in the way. After questioning 
her pretty closely in order to learn the difficulty, 
I found that the young lady and her father were 
not on the best of terms. They had in times past 
disputed over some matters concerning her court- 
ship, which resulted in her leaving home. I 
asked her if she was willing to forgive her father 
and become reconciled to him. She said she was 
not. I asked the father if he was willing to for- 
give his daughter and become reconciled to her 
and help her in her efforts to live a Christian life. 
The father declared his willingness to do what 

163 



164 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

was right in the matter, and was ready to for- 
give his daughter the moment she requested it. 
As service after service came around, the 
young woman always presented herself at the 
altar. One day I told her she would never find 
mercy as long as she cherished a hateful and un- 
forgiving spirit; that she had already cried 
enough to save a dozen souls, and if she was 
determined to cherish that unforgiving spirit, 
that I wanted her to leave the altar, and stop 
her crying, and never come back again till she 
was willing to pay the price. At this the young 
lady, in a very angry mood, left the altar and 
took her seat in the back part of the house, and 
during all of the remaining service she sat there 
and pouted, but her stubborn heart was being 
powerfully wrought upon by the Holy Spirit. 
The meeting closed, she felt that her time had 
come, and to let the night pass without getting 
right with her father, and with God, would seal 
her doom. She started for her father's house 
two miles away in the country and on the run, and 
the further the faster. The night was dark and 
the road was lonely, she was frightened, but she 
was so determined to find peace with God at all 
cost, that she plunged on and on until at last she 
bounded into her father's house and straight- 



An Entire Family Sav#d. 165 

way begged forgiveness. No sooner was her 
request granted than she fell upon the floor and 
cried to God for mercy and in a few minutes 
she was wonderfully saved. So marvelous and 
powerful was her conversion, that her father fell 
upon the floor and began to confess ; he was soon 
reclaimed and shouting the praises of Jesus. 

The mother, who had been witnessing the 
soul-stirring scene, felt that she needed something 
as well, and she, too, sought and found the Lord 
in saving power. While the happy three were 
rejoicing over their victory, a couple of the 
daughters of the household, who had been awak- 
ened from their sleep in an upper room, appeared 
upon the scene and they were invited to the same 
mourner's-bench where father, mother and sis- 
ter had obtained the blessing. They needed no 
second invitation, but to their knees they went, 
and soon they were in the glad jubilee. Suddenly 
down the stairs came two boys of the family, 
their faces were aglow and their hearts atune to 
the excellent praising of the five, both announc- 
ing that, while the shouting was going on be- 
low, they had been praying above and got blessed 
and had come down to enjoy the feast with the 
balance of them. 

The next morning, as I was approaching the 



1 66 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

church, I looked down the road and I saw a mule 
team coming at full speed, drawing a wagon load 
of people. When they reached the church the 
laughing, crying, shouting family all hailed me 
with delight and the father said, "Brother Hat- 
field, the whole of us were saved last night!" 
There was no preaching that morning, the meet- 
ing was thrown open and the time was spent 
in testimony, old-fashioned shouts, and hallelu- 
jahs, and a fruitful altar service. 

A number of years ago the presiding elders 
in my Conference combined against evangelists. 
They agreed not to procure their services, but 
they would assist each other. There were five 
of these elders who entered into this agreement. 
One elder, however, who happened to be my own 
elder, refused to commit himself to this plan. 
This elder had a clear head and a burdened heart. 
He immediately conferred with me, divulged the 
plan of the other elders, and then proposed, if 
I would stay in his district, he would furnish 
me work for every day in the year. We agreed, 
and I went to work and this was one among the 
most fruitful years of my life in soul saving. 
The next year at Conference the five elders who 
entered into this agreement reported a total of 
about two thousand three hundred conversions in 



An Entire Family Saved. 167 

their districts, while my elder reported over three 
thousand five hundred conversions upon his dis- 
trict alone. How God will honor and vindicate 
men who will stand for the right! The opposi- 
tion was all on the doctrine of holiness, but that 
settled the question, and the bars have been down 
ever since, and I have been running at large. 
"Glory to God!" I say, "Amen!" 



CHAPTER XXII. 

How a Backslidden Local Preacher Was 
Moved to Pray. A Monkey Service. 

I was once helping a Methodist preacher 
who was very timid about straight Gospel preach- 
ing. He was one of those compromising fellows 
who catered to the whims of the people, and he 
was so afraid that somebody's feelings might 
be hurt, he carried a sugar tit, and spent the 
most of his time sweetening it up to suit their 
taste. He had a congregation as dead as a knit. 
They reminded me of Ezekiel's valley of "dry 
bones. " Nothing short of fire and lightning 
could ever make them get a move on them. What 
they needed was a red-hot, fire-baptized, Holy- 
Ghost preacher to use the Gospel clapboard on 
them and give them a good spanking. 

We had been running the meeting about a 
week. I was convinced by their inactivity and 
stubbornness, and their fearful backslidden con- 
dition, that they needed something heroic. The 
pastor insisted upon preaching to sinners con- 

168 



A Backslidden Preach er Moved to Pray. 169 

tinually and that in a very mild form. I insisted 
that we should open up fire upon the dead church- 
members, and rattle their "dry bones." I told 
him that if we had a revival and got sinners saved 
in the presence of that dead church it would 
necessitate the protracting of the meeting longer 
than I could possibly stay in the town. 

It was Sunday night and the house was 
crowded. All the week long no visible good 
had been accomplished. The pastor again ad- 
vised only preaching to sinners. The pastor and 
I were doing all the work and never a smile, or 
encouraging nod of the head, or prayer, or an 
"Amen" could be gotten out of any of them. And 
there they sat, like tombstones in a graveyard in 
the "Amen Corner," and upon the front seats. 
This night, not having any clear leading of the 
Spirit, and desiring, until I should receive divine 
orders to the contrary, to co-operate peacefully 
with the pastor, I again endeavored to preach to 
sinners. Although God blessed me with liberty, 
the message seemed to produce little if any effect 
upon the impenitent. While the pastor was 
leading the singing for the altar call, I went down 
the aisle and spoke to several concerning their 
soul's salvation and the response was invariably, 
"When you get this dead church right, then we 



170 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

will come." By the time I had reached the rear 
of the church, the Lord gave me a message direct 
to professing Christians, and immediatly I turn- 
ed and walked back into the pulpit, and for thirty 
minutes turned loose upon that crowd a tornado 
of Sinai thunder and lightning and devastating 
floods of truth — truth calculated to destroy every 
Pharisaical foundation. Even the pastor hung 
his head in evident disapproval of the sudden 
change in the dignified order of things. I was 
alone, I stood there like Elijah of old among the 
prophets of Baal. After delivering this God- 
sent message, I made a second altar call, but this 
time to the church. I said, "Now don't sit there 
like a lot of turkey-buzzards winking and blink- 
ing at each other, but walk your dead carcasses 
right out here and to business, or I'll do some- 
thing the devil has never done, I'll shake the 
dust from my feet and leave this place and never 
return/' The people really desired a revival and 
did not want the meeting to close, and seeing 
that I meant what I said, they began to move out 
to the altar. 

The pastor was at last able to remove his 
head from between his knees and look up. He 
saw the people approaching the altar, said, 
"A-a-a-men !" That was the first word of en- 



A Backslidden Preacher Moved to Pray. 171 

couragement from his lips, for he trembled with 
fear, he thought I had ruined everything and 
spoiled the meeting by telling the truth to that 
dead church. 

"Now," said I, "get to praying, pray out 
loud, pray in concert, call upon God." No one 
responded. I then put my hand upon the shin- 
ning bald head of an old local preacher who had 
been backslidden for years, and said, "You pray." 
The man turned his head and looked up at me 
as if to say, "I don't have to." I put my hand 
back on his head and shook it a little and said, 
"I mean YOU, pray." He looked up again, as 
good as to say, "Pray yourself, if you want any 
praying." I raised my hand and brought it down 
so vigorously upon his old bald head that the 
smack was heard all over the house, and again 
said, "You lead in prayer." This time the old 
brother was not long in getting interested in a 
prayer. Whether he prayed to save his soul, or 
his head from another resounding smack, no- 
body knew, but he prayed, and he prayed like a 
boy fighting yellow jackets. I went to the op- 
posite end of the altar and put my hand upon a 
sister in the church, and, after shaking her quite 
a good deal, I succeeded in starting her in hot 
pursuit of the bald-headed preacher at the other 



i/2 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

end of the altar. Presently all began to pray, 
and shortly the heavenly fire descended and many 
were reclaimed, and saved, and Spirit-filled. 
This resulted in a great meeting, scores of souls 
were swept into the kingdom through the power 
and influence of this meeting. The crowds were 
so great that hundreds were surging at the doors 
at the night services for admittance who could 
not get in. 

An amusing incident occurred after this 
Sunday night service. On the way home, I, all 
unknown to them, walked up on a large company 
of little boys. They were all down on their knees, 
while one boy, imitating me, was hurrying about, 
shaking and slapping their heads, and crying 
out, "Pray, pray, pray, pray ; get at it, get at it, 
get at it; pray out loud, pray out loud, pray out 
loud." When they discovered my presence, they 
all cried, "There he is, there he is!" and away 
they scampered like a lot of frightened mice. 
Ere the meeting closed many of these same boys 
got an introduction to a genuine mourners'- 
bench, and some of them, thank God ! found peace 
and pardon. 

I had assisted a Methodist preacher in reviv- 
al work who had a little boy, probably five years 
old, who frequently played church. One time 



A Backslidden Preacher Moved to Pray. 173 

this pastor had labored hard with his people on 
one of his appointments for a revival meeting. 
He felt that a break was imminent and also felt 
that alone he could not precipitate it. On a Sab- 
bath morning he frankly told the congregation 
his conviction and added that he believed if Broth- 
er Hatfield could be procured they would most 
likely have a revival. The little boy had listened 
attentively as the father spoke and when the 
father finished his remarks the boy arose and 
walked back and forth in front of the pulpit, 
imitating some of my manners, clapping and rub- 
bing his hands together, saying over and over, 
"I'm Johnnie Hatfield, I'm Johnnie Hatfield, I'm 
Johnnie Hatfield/' The boy's singular actions 
melted up the congregation and the people burst 
out into tears, and the Spirit fell upon them and 
they shouted and praised the Lord. To the won- 
derment of all, the revival broke then and there 
and ran on for many days, and resulted in great 
victory, and many souls being saved. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
Obeying Providential Impressions. 

The experiences related in this chapter inter- 
estingly illustrate the intimate acquaintance of 
God's saints with the voice of the Holy Spirit, 
and the alacrity with which they obey that voice, 
and also they are a wonderful fulfillment of the 
scriptural promises, "Commit thy way unto the 
Lord and He will direct thy paths," and, "He 
putteth forth His own sheep . . . and the sheep 
follow Him, for they know His voice, and a 
stranger they will not follow, . . . for they know 
not the voice of strangers." 

While conducting a revival meeting in the 
town of Andrews, Ind., during an evening service 
a drunken man sent me a note in which he re- 
quested prayer for his salvation. As I was pass- 
ing out of the church that night, the man met me 
in the aisle and asked if I had prayed for him. 
I replied that it was my purpose as soon as I 
reached my room at the parsonage. The man 
begged me not to fail to do so. I assured him 

174 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 175 

that I would not, and started for my room. Just 
as I reached the door, a sudden impression came 
to me that I must pray for the man at once. I 
returned to the man in the aisle and told him that 
I must pray for him then and there. The man 
protested and urged me to carry out my original 
intention and pray for him when I got to my 
room, but I informed him that I must pray for 
him now or not at all. After considerable per- 
suasion, I got the man upon his knees. After 
much praying, urging the man to pray, I suceed- 
ed in getting him to pray, and in a short while 
he was converted. 

The man proved to be a brakeman on the 
railroad. At two o'clock the next morning he 
was called out to make up his train, and while 
at his work he missed his footing and fell under 
the car wheels and his limbs were severed from 
his body. The suffering man's fellow-workmen 
rushed to his assistance, but were helpless in do- 
ing him much good. As they stood around him 
watching his life ebb away by the loss of blood 
that was spurting from the arteries, he was shout- 
ing and praising God, and said, "Oh, how glad I 
am that I settled it last night!" 

I arrived at the town of Ellis, Kan., one very 
dark, stormy night. The wind was blowing a 



176 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

gale, and boxes and barrels and tree limbs were 
being hurled about the streets as I stepped from 
the train. I made a dash for the nearest hotel 
from the depot and just as I reached the corner 
of the depot a voice spoke to me as clearly as 
the crack and crash of the thunder over my head, 
"Stop ! Go the other way." To obey the voice re- 
quired me to go some considerable distance far- 
ther by a circuitous route and the big drops of a 
drenching rain were already falling, but I wheel- 
ed about and made a dash in the opposite direc- 
tion and at last reached the hotel. As I wheeled 
about to change my course, I passed a gentle- 
man going in the same direction I had intended 
taking. Upon reaching the hotel drenched with 
rain on account of my long distance I had to 
make, I discovered that the gentleman whom I 
had passed when the voice bade me stop had been 
hold up by highwaymen and robbed within a few 
feet of where I retraced my steps. 

On another occasion I v/as in the town of Red 
Oaks, la. My next engagement was in Indiana 
and I planned to make the journey east over the 
Rock Island Railroad. I had also arranged to 
stop over a few days {at Buffalo Rock, near 
Ottawa, 111., where a number of my friends were 
conducting a camp-meeting. On Sunday even- 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 177 

ing, the night before I was to leave Red Oaks, a 
strong impression not to take the Rock Island 
train came upon me. I thought this was very 
strange indeed and tried to shake off the impres- 
sion, every argument of reason was in favor of 
the Rock Island route, but the impression re- 
mained so clear that, at considerable sacrifice 
of my best wishes in the matter, I determined to 
abandon my original plans and go home by the 
Burlington route and thus forego the pleasure 
of a few days at the Illinois camp-meeting. The 
Burlington route was thirty miles across the 
country from Red Oaks and the next norning I 
drove those thirty weary miles away from one of 
the finest trains in the world to the Burlington 
station, where I boarded an eastbound for Chi- 
cago. The mystery of this strange proceeding 
remained impenetrable until, upon reaching the 
Union Depot in Chicago, I purchased a morn- 
ing paper and read the awful description of the 
wreck upon the Rock Island road of the very 
train I had originally planned to occupy upon 
my journey. The train had pitched down. an em- 
bankment, taken fire and many lives had been 
lost. 

While I was en route from San Francisco, 
Cal., to Los Angeles some years ago, I prayed 



178 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

God to make me instrumental that day in the sal- 
vation of some soul. A young woman was oc- 
cupying a seat just ahead of me, and the Holy 
Spirit impressed me that here was the precious 
soul to be saved. All day long travelers were 
entering and leaving the car, and several oc- 
cupied the seat with me. I tried to interest them 
in religion, but without success. One woman 
especially, I asked her if she was a member of 
church; she said, "Have you ever been in Cali- 
fornia before ?" I again asked her if she was a 
Christian ; she said, "You will find this one of the 
most beautiful states in the Union." But I still 
persisted with my inquiry, "Have you ever 
made any pretentions to the Christian religion ?" 
She said, "This is a land of flowers, the air is; 
ladened with sweet odors, and eucalyptus and pep- 
per trees are ever green the year around. You 
will be delighted." Unwilling to take her bluff, 
I again put the question; "This is certainly a 
beautiful country, but, it is not Heaven ; have you 
made any preparations for that place?" She 
said, "When you get further south, you will come 
to the fruit ranches, the oranges, lemons, olives, 
and the fruitful vineyards." Just then the train 
whistled for a station, the woman arose and 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 179 

started from the car, saying, "I am glad to have 
met you." 

Later on in the evening the train stopped for 
lunch, and when the passengers returned to their 
car, some one had taken the young woman's seat 
that sat in front of me. Seeing this to be my 
opportunity, I invited the young lady to a seat 
with me. In a very few moments after she was 
seated, I addressed her upon the subject of re- 
ligion. She admitted that she was very desirous 
of becoming a Christian. I at once began to 
urge her to seek the experience and make a full 
surrender to Jesus just now. I gave her some 
instructions along the line of faith, quoting some 
promises. She was a hungry soul, and was will- 
ing to pay the price. I asked her to raise both 
hands and eyes and, in simple, trusting faith, be- 
lieve that Jesus saved, while I sang the little song, 

"I can, I will, I do believe 
That Jesus saves me now." 

The passengers were by this time greatly inter- 
ested in these novel proceedings and were gaz- 
ing at us with considerable interest, but nothing 
daunted the young woman, she prayed through 
and gave clear evidence that she was saved. She 
was so grateful for the interest I had taken in 



180 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

the salvation of her soul, she was full of praises 
to God for the new-found blessing, and said this 
was one trip she would never forget. 

A notoriously wicked cowboy attended one of 
my meetings in the western part of the state 
of Kansas. The people told me if I could get 
that man converted it would be the best thing 
that ever struck that part of the country. The 
cowboy had a mania for hunting coyotes. When 
I learned this I began to arrange my net to catch 
this wild, wary fish. Accordingly, one night dur- 
ing the after service I went down into the con- 
gregation where the man was standing and, in- 
stead of extending him the expected invitation to 
come to Jesus, I asked him if he was a coyote 
hunter. He said he was. Then I asked him for 
the pleasure of going with him on a hunt. He 
seemed to be well pleased with this proposal and 
gave his consent, that he was ready to go at any 
time I would suggest, and we arranged for the 
hunt the following day. 

On the morrow when we closed our forenoon 
service, as I stepped from the church door I met 
my man. He was ready for me ; he had a pony 
all saddled and ready to ride and some big grey- 
hounds trotting around in the yard. I mounted 
my pony and away we went. I found before I 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 181 

went very far that when game was chased up 
you could no more hold that pony than you could 
hold a steam engine. It had been trained to go 
when the hounds went, and it was not slow in 
trying to keep up with the procession, and I made 
myself busy in trying to stick to the pony. We 
must have traveled over thirty miles that after- 
noon. There were some things that I enjoyed in 
that evening's ride and there were some things 
not so pleasant. The next day I was so sore that 
I could not cross my legs, but I rejoiced over the 
fact that I had completely won the cowboy's con- 
fidence. 

That night the cowboy's heart was wide 
open to the message of the preacher and 
the Holy Spirit sent deep conviction into his soul. 
On the following night a wonderful thing hap- 
pened. Just as the blinding light fell upon Saul 
of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, it fell upon 
this wicked cowboy and for twenty-four hours 
he was perfectly blinded and was lead about by 
the hand. He said that he was enveloped in a 
white cloud that he could not see through. The 
next day when the cloud was lifted and his sight 
returned there was a holy demonstration from 
that cowboy that one seldom ever sees in a re- 



182 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

vival. He surely did take the meeting and he set 
things on fire and we had a time. 

One night when the young disturbers were 
unusually troublesome, upon seeing one of them 
start out, I cried out in a loud voice, "There goes 
Rag," and then proceeded with my sermon until 
I observed another nervous individual making 
for the door, and again I cried out, "There goes 
Tag," and then I added, "I want everybody to 
watch closely, for the next one who goes out will 
be 'Bobtail.'" But "Bobtail" didn't leave his 
seat that night and the jumping up and running 
out and in was stopped for that service. 

At another time we were having the same 
difficulty; young girls as well as boys were con- 
stantly trotting in and out of the house and mak- 
ing much disturbance. Finally one night I said 
to the pastor, who was sitting in the pulpit at the 
time I was preaching, "Brother A — , you may 
not know what is the matter with these folks that 
makes them so restless, and uneasy, but I be- 
lieve that I have solved the problem ; these people 
have caught an awful disease, they have got the 
itch, and they don't want to act ill-mannerly 
here in the house and they are just going out to 
scratch. Now any of you folks here who have 
the itch, and who want to go out to scratch, we 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 183 

will excuse you." For the remaining part of the 
service we had it quiet, no one was disposed to 
leave the room. 

While engaged in personal work in a congre- 
gation one time, I approached a woman who 
showed clearly that she was not in sympathy with 
the meeting ; she had a face on her like a thunder 
cloud, and showed a disposition as though she 
was anxious to let the grounds of her antagonism 
be known. I courteously asked her if she was 
saved, she turned up her nose and very curtly 
replied in a sarcastic way, "I am if the eunuch 
was." I asked her if she was in possession of an 
experience like that of the eunuch. She answered 
in the affirmative. Then I said, "Let us compare 
your experiences and see if they are parallel. 
First, the Bible says the eunuch went down into 
the water. Thus far your experiences are par- 
allel. Second, the Bible says that the eunuch 
came up out of the water ; again your experiences 
parallel. Third, the Bible says the eunuch went 
on his way rejoicing, but here your experience 
crosses with the eunuch's, because you are going 
on your way disputing, faultfinding, and arguing, 
so, you see, you lack the most essential point in 
the eunuch's experience." 

On another occasion I was accosted by a Pres- 



1 84 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

byterian lady who took issue with the preaching 
by declaring it was impossible for any one to live 
without committing sins, and to substantiate her 
claims she referred to the third chapter of Romans 
and quoted, "There is none good, no not one." 
I asked the good woman if she was willing for 
me to read that awful alignment against the 
wicked, human race substituting the word Pres- 
byterians for all of the pronouns I found. The 
woman gave her consent and I proceeded to 
paraphrase the Scripture as follows : "There are 
no righteous Presbyterians, no not one. There 
are no Presbyterians that seeketh after God. The 
Presbyterians' throats are open sepulchres, their 
tongues have used, deceit, the poison of asps is 
under their lips. The Presbyterians' mouths are 
full of cursing and bitterness. Destruction and 
misery are in their way. The way of peace the 
Presbyterians have not known. There is no fear 
of God before a Presbyterian's eyes." The wom- 
an by this time clearly evinced her chagrin 
as I read those awful, scathing denunciations 
of her beloved sect. At last, unable to 
longerretain her emotions, she cried, "Stop, man, 
stop!" I closed the Book, but I had already 
read enough to effectually stop her argument. 
I had a cousin who ran a men's furnishing 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 185 

store. There were a couple of infidels who would 
loaf around the store and pour out their infidelity 
and ridicule of the churches and professors of 
religion. My cousin told them one day that he 
had a cousin who was a preacher and if he ever 
got hold of them he would shut them up. One 
day I happened to step into the store and the 
infidels were there and were # pouring out their 
poisonous doctrine upon the crowd that was sit- 
ting aroung the stove. My cousin called to me 
from the back part of the house where they were 
all sitting to come back there and take some of the 
conceit out of those infidels. At once the Lord 
showed me what to do with that crowd, and, to 
their surprise, instead of my paying any attention 
to their old thread-bare arguments, I began to 
shout and praise God and holler "Glory!" and 
"Hallelujah !" and "Bless. the Lord!" and in less 
than five minutes I was monarch of all I sur- 
veyed. The field was vacated, the enemy van- 
quished. The infidels and the others as well had 
slipped away to parts unknown and soon my cous- 
in had suddenly become very busy tapping on a 
window-pane in the front part of the room. Bless 
God! "The wicked fleeth when no man pur- 
sueth." 

One time I was invited to take charge of a 



1 86 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

Holiness convention in a city in the State of Il- 
linois. The meeting was to be held in an opera- 
house. There were quite a number of Holiness 
professors in and about the city. If one could 
judge by their outward appearance, their man- 
ner of dress, etc., they were all right, but inward- 
ly they were spiritually dead, and knew not that 
the Spirit had departed from them. I arrived 
in the afternoon. I had been there but a few 
minutes when a brother preacher, with a long- 
tailed ooat buttoned clear up to the chin, asked 
me why I wore a white necktie. I told him for 
the same reason he wore a. long-tailed coat, I 
wanted to appear somewhat clerical. 

They all had their testimony, if they had lost 
their experience, "Saved and sanctified and kept 
by the power of God." Their testimonies remind- 
ed me of an old tavern sign that stood by the road- 
side, on it were these words, "Entertainment for 
man and beast." The old tavern and stable had 
been burned for over twenty years, but the old 
sign stuck to it that there was "entertainment for 
man and beast." The wind had rocked it, the rain 
had wet it, the hail had beat it, the snow had 
covered it, the birds had roosted on it, but it still 
kept saying all the time to every passer-by, "En- 
tertainment for man and beast." 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 187 

Oh, how those words "Saved and sanctified" 
are rung in the ears of the people in these latter 
days, when the life of their experience has been 
gone for years ! 

At the appointed hour on the first night I 
entered the opera-house alone. I expected to see 
a large congregation, but, to my surprise, there 
were but two persons present. A half hour pass- 
ed and two others entered the room. I was on 
the stage, I stepped to the front and asked my 
congregation if they thought this would be all 
of the crowd for the evening. One of them said 
they thought that was all of the crowd for that 
night. I said this would be a good crowd for a 
blind man to speak to, but before I speak I guess 
that I had better ring the bell. At once I 
began to yell at the top of my voice, then I grab- 
bed the large sceneries and began to shake them 
vigorously and make all the noise I could, then I 
began to pound on the windows, then I jumped 
from the stage and ran all over the auditorium 
yelling and pitching the chairs around, then back 
to the stage, upsetting some benches. Soon I heard 
a number of footsteps coming upstairs, but I 
kept up my gymnastics until I had attracted quite 
a good-sized crowd, and then I opened up on them 
with a red-hot exhortation. At the close of the 



1 88 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

service I announced that this was the first act, 
and that there would be services the next night, 
and all those who wanted to see the fireworks 
should come early. It was amusing to see the 
first original four who never took their eyes off 
of me during the whole time I was working up 
my congregation. They looked like a lot of owls 
in a haw bush, they did not know whether to go 
or stay, they batted their eyes like toads in a rain- 
storm. It would not be necessary to say that we 
had a crowd the next night, they were all there, 
"long-tailed coat/' "no necktie/' "first blessing," 
"second blessing," "third blessing," and no bles- 
sing at all, in and on their roost. After the ser- 
vices some one asked if we could use the church 
for the day services on account of some aged peo- 
ple who were not able to climb the heavy stairs 
in the opera-house. The elder of the church arose 
and said they had never refused their church for 
any religious work, but he did not think it would 
be best on this occasion, as he had some fears of 
fanaticism (he had, of course, heard about my 
unique method of raising a congregation). I 
looked that elder squarely in the face and said, 
"My brother, you need not be afraid of fanatic- 
ism in your church : you are too dead to produce 
a fanatic; it takes something that has life in it 



Obeying Providential Impressions. 189 

to produce a fanatic." I had many difficulties to 
encounter in this meeting, but the Lord was good 
to us and we had some blessed victories. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Drawing the Bow at a Venture, but 
Hitting the Mark Each Time. 

I was in western Iowa conducting a Holi- 
ness camp-meeting. The Spirit of the Lord was 
upon the meeting and was searching many hearts, 
the altar was filled with seekers at almost every 
service. Along with these seekers was a well-to- 
do farmer, a stock man; he was one among the 
first seekers in the meeting, and continued to 
keep it up until near the close of the meeting. 
He was at every altar service, he carried a heavy 
burden and had a very sad look. He ate and 
slept but little, his wife said he lost ten pounds 
during that meeting. During all this time I was 
studying the man, and finally arrived at the con- 
clusion that there was something wrong in his 
past life which had to be straightened up before 
God would give him peace in his soul. I told him 
a number of times that there was something in 
his way, or he would get through, but he denied 
having anything in his way. One day toward the 

190 



Drawing the Bow at a Venture, iqi 



y- 



close of the camp-meeting he was lying on his 
breast with face in the straw, groaning. I 
said, "Brother, you need not tell me that yon 
haven't got anything in your way, for I believe 
you have." He shook his head and denied the 
charge. "Now," said I, "my brother, you can 
shake your head if you want to, but I dare you to 
get upon your knees and look me squarely in the 
face, and I will tell you what it is." Instantly 
the man sprung to his knees, turned his face to- 
wards me and looked at me with a piercing eye. 
Everything was hushed in silence, there were a 
thousand onlookers, he on one side of the altar 
and I on the other, both staring each other in 
the face. Suddenly I raised my hand and stuck 
my finger at him, and said, "My brother, I can 
see a big red steer down your throat that will 
weigh about fourteen hundred pounds." The man 
dropped his head for a moment, then raised it 
again, and with faltering voice confessed that I 
was right. Some years previous, a neighbor's red 
steer, about the weight I described, had broken 
out upon the public highway and this man, as the 
steer was passing his home, turned him in the lot 
with his own cattle, and in a few days shipped 
him off to market. When his sin was uncovered, 
he was as penitent as David, when Nathan said, 



192 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

"Thou art the man." He confessed the sin, made 
the monetary restitution, and got right with God. 
Some time after this incident I was conduct- 
ing a revival meeting for a Methodist preacher in 
northern Indiana. In this, meeting there was a 
class-leader seeking a pure heart. He was hav- 
ing a terrible struggle without any signs of vic- 
tory. He was regarded by the community as the 
best man in the church and no one ever question- 
ed his piety. For several days he was at the altar, 
and was having a struggle to get through. I 
was satisfied that there was something in his 
way, so I was impressed to relate to him the above 
incident regarding the red. steer. I watched him 
closely as I related the story. I saw his face flush 
guiltily and I was convinced that I was on the 
right trail, and by a little perseverance along the 
route I would jump up a steer, or hog, or sheep 
somewhere between that man and victory. I 
was being entertained at his home at this time. 
We were at the dinner-table. I impressed him 
that I was a mind-reader, he lost his appetite, he 
never took another bite, he arose from the table 
with a pale face and with quivering lips asked 
me to kneel with him in prayer. I gladly turned 
from the table and kneeled in front of him at a 
chair. We were there for some time. I prayed 



Drawing the: Bow at a Venture. 193 

and labored with him for two hours. At last he 
arose and declared that he had the blessing, he 
walked the room and clapped his hands and prais- 
ed the Lord and tried to smile, but he had the 
bell by the clapper and it would n't ring. I said, 
"My brother, you don't look right out of your 
eyes, there is something sheepish about them. 
You will have to let God shear you if you get 
right with Him. You have wool He don't want 
you to have." He again dropped upon his knees 
and sobbed and prayed. Finally he looked up at 
me and said, "Brother Hatfield, I believe you 
are a mind-reader." "Yes," I said, "there 
are a lot of things I know that you don't 
think I know." "Well," said he, "I might as well 
tell you, for I am satisfied that you know what it 
is, but it seems like it will pull my heartstrings 
out to confess it, but one day one of my neighbor's 
sheep got into my pasture with my sheep and I 
never told him. I sold the sheep and kept the 
money." When the old man was willing to make 
restitution with his neighbor, and confess his sins 
to God, he soon found peace, and was then a 
proper candidate for the blessing of a pure heart. 
On another occasion, a young lady was hav- 
ing a hard struggle in her endeavor to pray 
through to victory. She presented herself at 



194 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

the altar many times. After very earnest prayer 
she frequently would arise with a very happy 
countenance, then she would sling her hand up 
and down, then with a look of despair she would 
drive the joyful expression away, and then drop 
on her knees and weep and cry and plead with 
God to save her soul. One day she sprang to 
her feet and, with a testimony of victory, she 
went around shaking the hands of her friends, 
but there was not that clear evidence about it 
that made it satisfactory with me. I was con- 
vinced that there was something in the young 
woman's life that had not been fully adjusted, 
and I kindly said, "My young sister, don't make 
a mistake in this matter, it is too important. You 
are on the road to victory, but you must pay the 
full price." The young woman declared that 
there was nothing in the way, and then her moth- 
er also declared that she knew there was nothing 
in her daughter's life to interfere with her sal- 
vation, for she had always been a good girl and 
had never, to her knowledge, told a falsehood 
in her life. I replied that I had never known 
a person who had much difficulty in getting a 
clear experience who had told the whole truth 
over an altar and that I was satisfied there was 
still something uncovered in the girl's life. I 



Drawing The Bow at a Venture. 195 

again related the "red steer" incident, and then 
asked her what made her flap her hands. She 
looked at me as if she knew that I was discern- 
ing the hidden mystery, and then confessed that 
one day while she was riding along the road in 
a buggy with her sister she threw a rock at a 
drove of turkeys and hit one on the head and 
killed it, and when she would pray, just about 
the time she was about to be blessed that turkey 
would appear flapping its wings. But she fixed 
up the turkey bill and then the Lord saved her, 
and she surely did get a great experience, her 
face fairly shone with glory. 

One afternoon in a tent meeting, during an 
altar service there was an elderly woman seek- 
ing power. I told her she needed something 
more vital than power — she needed to go down 
to the very rock bottom and obtain an experi- 
ence that would root and ground her in Christ 
Jesus. The woman insisted that there was noth- 
ing the matter with her except a lack of power, 
and for this she continued to pray. Sometimes 
she would arise and walk the aisles and shout 
and act as though she was confident that her 
prayer was answered, but there was something 
about it that did not appeal to me that she was 
in the possession of a real victory, and, sure 



196 Thirty-thrive Years a Live Wire. 

enough, in a few days she would be down at the 
altar again praying for power. Again and 
again I admonished her to seek an experience 
and get saved and sanctified wholly and then the 
Holy Ghost would come into her life, and that 
would give her power, and she would have some- 
thing then that would be as lasting as the stars, 
and that would stand when the world is on fire. 
But she was obstinate and kept on in her own 
way for about two weeks. I had been studying 
her more or less during this time. Finally, by 
the aid of the Spirit, I was enabled to discern 
the real trouble with the woman. Then I re- 
quested her to hold up her head and look at me, 
which she did ; then I told her that it wasn't power 
that she needed, but that there was something 
wrong in her life that she needed to make right, 
and when she did that, then there would be some 
possibility of her receiving the much-desired 
power. This was quite an offence to the old sis- 
ter, and she replied in a very firm way that I 
was very much mistaken in my conclusions in 
regard to her case, that the only thing in her way 
was unbelief. I responded that no doubt un- 
belief was in her way, but behind her unbelief 
there was a cause and when this cause was re- 
moved her unbelief would vanish away. Then 



Drawing The Bow at a Venture. 197 

I asked her if she really wished to know the 
cause of her unbelief, that I had discerned it, 
and could give it to her. After some hesitancy 
she replied in the affirmative. Then I said, 
"My sister, the trouble with you is your tongue ; 
it's too long, and you use it too freely in talk- 
ing about your neighbors." Her eyes flashed 
fire, she declared that I had misrepresented her, 
I had no business making such charges against 
her in the presence of the congregation. I re- 
plied that I had spoken the truth and could prove 
it by her neighbors, and I was not conscious 
what her neighbors knew. But she quickly re- 
sponded, "I dare you to do it." "Very well," I 
replied, "everybody in this congregation that 
believes that this woman talks too much about 
her neighbors hold up your hands." Nearly 
everybody present held up their hands. "Now," 
I said, "look around and see what your neigh- 
bors think about it." As the woman gazed about 
her, in her bewilderment she looked as though 
she would like to vanish from the earth and af- 
ter a few moments, when she had regained suf- 
ficient self-control to speak, she ejaculated, "It's 
no use for me to stay here any longer." I re- 
plied, "No, unless you are willing to make full 
confessions." The woman was disobedient to the 
heavenly vision, and remained so until her death. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

How Tke Devil Hates a Holiness Meeting. 

Once I was called to the city of Washing- 
ton, D. C, to hold a Holiness Convention in a 
big opera-house. I was in company with my 
wife as well as my two singers, Arthur and 
Flora Phillips, and other evangelists. We had a 
good time and a great victory, but a very hard 
battle. We had some very close preaching on 
radical lines that was more than the devil could 
stand, and he sought every device to break up 
the meeting. He threw rocks through the win- 
dows, and, in more ways than one, sought our 
personal injury, but the more they opposed, the 
hotter the messages would come. Finally, one 
evening while holding* a street meeting in front 
of the opera-house with a thousand people, more 
or less, in attendance, we were informed by those 
who were in a position to know that "the devil 
would be to pay" that night, and sure enough, 
just about the time we were in the midst of our 
service, there was a runaway horse hitched to 

198 



The Devil Hates a Holiness Meeting. 199 

a buggy with two men in it, plunged into our 
crowd, before we were aware of it, cutting a 
swath through the crowd as wide as the buggy 
and throwing people in every direction. He 
jumped with his feet in the little Bilhorn organ 
and smashed it up and bruised and injured many 
persons. My wife was one among the wounded 
and suffered much in many ways, her nose was 
broken flat on her face, there was a great gash 
cut in her forehead, four of her ribs were frac- 
tured, her neck was nearly broken and many 
other bruises on her body. When I found her 
it seemed as if there was no hope for her life. 
If ever I prayed, it was then. I had but little 
money and but few friends, but in a few mom- 
ents we were hurried to a free hospital in an am- 
bulance. Thank God for a free hospital! that 
was one time that I needed it, and appreciated 
it. They did excellent work, and in a few days 
we were able to leave for our next meeting. 

We were told that this was a scheme to break- 
up our tent meeting, but it was more serious 
than they anticipated, for the men in the buggy 
were thrown out as the horse turned the corner 
a few squares below and nearly killed. They 
had lost control of their hoise, they couldn't 



2oo Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

manage him, and he got away with them, and 
they got the worst of it after all. 

At another time, I was conducting a revival 
meeting in Cambridge, Mass., in an Evangelical 
Church not many squares from Harvard Uni- 
versity. We were having an excellent meeting, 
the Spirit of the Lord was manifested in great 
power, the altar was crowded and many were 
praying Ihrough to victory. The interest was 
intense, the crowds were large, the devil was 
stirred, the opposers sought the authorities to 
put a stop to the meeting. They waited on the 
chief of police, but they were informed that there 
was no way in which they could order the meet- 
ing closed, that it was church property and they 
were in their own building and they had a per- 
fect right to worship as they pleased. Finding 
that they were defeated in this attempt, they 
were determined to not be thwarted in their pur- 
poses; if it could not be done in a legal way, 
they would have it done in an illegal way. So, 
one Sunday night while I was preaching to a 
crowded house, and the Spirit of the Lord was 
upon the meeting, I was in the midst of my ser- 
mon, describing a scene of the martyrs. There 
were a score or more of rowdies in the room, 
who were there to disturb the meeting. Sud- 



Ths Dsvii, Hatss a Holiness Meeting. 201 

denly a young man pushed from the aisle along 
the wall where quite a number were standing. 
I saw the devil was in him, he had his hat on, 
he walked in front of the pulpit while I was 
preaching. It was a sign for the others to be- 
gin, they all sprang to their feet and the row 
began. They first attacked the sexton, striking 
him over the eye with a pair of brass knucks 
and knocking him down, but thank God ! we had 
a few sanctified brethren that knew how to 
handle their fists as well as they, and they went 
after them. It was a very exciting moment, the 
women and children and some timid men ran 
to the basement, the rocks and gravel were com- 
ing through the doors from those outside, they 
knocked each other like mules kicking. One 
sanctified brother knocked five down in one pile 
in the door. I stopped preaching and sang two 
verses of "J esus Lover of My Soul" before they 
cleared the house. The policeman arrived on 
the scene to make a few arrests, while the oth- 
ers scampered away, but they carried with them 
some remembrances that will cause them to never 
forget that Holiness meeting. 

While some of the brethren were in the ad- 
joining room getting their wounds dressed, we 
restored order and went on and I finished my 



202 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

sermon and we had a good meeting in spite of 
the devil. 

It seemed as if they had it in for me. On 
the following Wednesday night a very desper- 
ate character rushed into the church and down 
the aisle with a revolver in one hand and a 
"black jack" in the other. It was about eleven 
o'clock. I was on my knees instructing an altar 
full of seekers, but we had a policeman in the 
house and he saw him just in time to catch 
him before he got to me. Bless the Lord! 
"Our God is a present help in time of need," and 
again I was enabled to make another narrow 
escape, and I am still on the "war-path," fight- 
ing the devil, but I am getting much older now. 

As I travel through the country they call 
me all kinds of names. "Look out, dad, or you 
will get run over with these trucks." "Say! 
old man, your train is ready." "Look out, 
uncle, there is a train coming there." "Now, 
father, come down the steps careful, don't fall." 
"Now, grandpa, if you will come and go with 
me, I'll put you on your train." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 
Getting in the Brush. 

I don't know that every preacher has had 
such experiences or not, but if they have not, 
it is not an experience to be coveted. Of all 
the times in the history of a man's life when 
he feels the least, when he would like to find 
a hiding-place and shut himself up from the 
face of all men never to be seen again, it is 
when he strikes the brush patch while standing 
in the pulpit trying to preach the Word of God. 
That is one time he doesn't need a hot stew for 
a perspiration to sweat out a cold. No one in 
that congregation dare say that they had cold 
preaching from their pastor on an occasion like 
that; they could all very clearly say that, from 
the way he handled his handkerchief and mopped 
his face and neck, he was warming up. 

I remember a young preacher one time that 
vns called to preach a funeral. The deceased 
had been a very wicked person and had ended 
his life by committing suicide. The young 

203 



204 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

preacher very much dreaded the undertaking, 
the subject not being a good one it made it em- 
barrassing for him. The hour for service ar- 
rived, the congregation had assembled and every- 
thing was in readiness. An hour passed and 
still he was not there. Finally he made his ap- 
pearance. He rushed down the aisle and into 
the pulpit and hastily laid aside his wraps and 
proceeded with the service. It was a very cold 
day, mercury several degrees below zero. The 
young preacher when he first entered the pulpit 
looked very cold, and shivered, but he had not 
been preaching only a few minutes until he was 
wiping the perspiration from his face. A few 
moments more when he unbottoned his coat, then 
his vest, and later on he took his collar ofif, and 
before he closed up he had the windows all down 
and his congregation nearly freezing. I have of- 
ten wondered what that dear young man was try- 
ing to say, but I never could tell, and I don't think 
any one in that church knew, neither himself. 
He was to be pitied. I know how it goes my- 
self. I have been there a few times, I have had 
everything to turn dark all around me, when I 
would forget everything I ever knew and could 
not think of one thing to say. Now when a 
fellow strikes a place like that, it will open up 



Getting in the: Brush. 205 

the pores of his skin and it won't be long until 
he will feel the perspiration running down his 
body in streams. It is a fine prescription for 
the big head. If there is anything in the world 
that will take the conceit out of a preacher that 
is trying to flatter himself that he is one of 
those that can preach, this will come as near 
doing it as anything I know of. 

I remember one time on a hot summer day, on 
a quarterly meeting occasion, I was preach- 
ing the morning sermon. The house was 
crowded and it was very warm. I had on a 
black suit of clothes. After I had been preach- 
ing for some time, I turned and said to the pas- 
tor, "Brother H — , if I was at home I would 
take off my coat." He quickly said, "Make 
yourself at home, take it off." I slipped out 
of my coat and laid it on a chair, then turned 
to the audience. The last word I had said was 
"Abraham," and when I went to speak the only 
word I could think of was Abraham, everything 
turned dark around me, everything I ever knew 
vanished from me and there I stood in my white 
shirtsleeves, with nothing to say except every 
little bit I would say Abraham, he was the only 
person I could think of on this earth at that 
time. My body got hot, my face turned red, 



206 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

perspiration flowed in streams, I felt so foolish. 
Finally I regained some consciousness and had 
a prayer, during which time I was enabled to 
gather my thoughts and proceed with my ser- 
mon, but it was with great effort. I had al- 
ways been fortunate enough heretofore, when 
I got into a close place, to shout out, but this 
was one time I had no shout in me. It just 
simply took everything out of me until there was 
nothing left but "Abraham." 

At another time, I was at a big camp-meet- 
ing and was preaching the closing sermon of the 
camp on Sunday night. There was an immense 
crowd, the tabernacle would not hold half the 
people that were on the grounds. On the out- 
side there were gay, giddy young folks moving 
about continually; on the inside, were seated, 
mostly, church-members that were backslidden 
holiness-fighters. They were there for no good. 
I was trying to preach from the text : "When the 
great day of his wrath shall come who shall be 
able to stand?" I was having a hard time, but I 
was not embarrassed. Suddenly my mouth closed 
and I could not say another word. I walked the 
rostrum for ten or fifteen minutes, but at no time 
could I proceed with my sermon. There were a 
dozen or more preachers sitting back of me. I 



Getting in the Brush. 207 

felt that they were being much tried with my 
conduct, but I couldn't help it, but it did one thing, 
it quieted that restless crowd. There was a hush 
that settled upon that camp-ground until all was 
in profound stillness. The preachers at last began 
to realize the situation, when, one by one, they 
began to slip down on their knees and engage in 
prayer. Presently my mouth flew open, but not 
to proceed with my sermon. It was an exhorta- 
tion, and for that backslidden outfit that was pro- 
ducing so much darkness and filling the place 
with devils. I told them that they were so full of 
evil spirits that the place was more like Hell than 
a camp-ground; that the devils were so thick in 
the aisles that no sinner living could have the 
nerve to make his way to the altar, and for about 
twenty minutes I poured red-hot shot down on 
that congregation until their hides were so full 
of holes they would have made good sieves. While 
I was still burning it into them, the sinners in the 
back part of the tent rose up and came around 
and came to the altar from the back way. They 
kept coming until the altar was filled and not one 
would dare to venture down the aisles. I called 
their attention to it, and in spite of all the opposi- 
tion that the devil and holiness-fighters could 
bring against us, God gave us a great victory 



208 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

that night, and we closed up shouting the praises 
of Jesus. 

There was one very peculiar incident 
happened that night. After all the seekers had 
been saved there remained one old sinner about 
seventy years old. He was under great convic- 
tion and was very penitent. We all did every- 
thing we could to pray the old man through, but 
somehow he could not reach a point of faith. 
The hour was growing late, the workers were 
very tired, the old sinner had seated himself on 
the altar, he had his head hung as if in deep medi- 
tation. An old sanctified brother, about the same 
age of the penitent man, walked up to him and 
told him to hold up his head. He looked up and 
the sanctified brother took both hands and smack- 
ed the old sinner on each cheek several times 
quite hard. The old sinner jumped to his feet and 
grabbed the brother and they both clinched and 
for a moment it looked as if it was going to re- 
sult in something serious. Some of the brethren 
were quite uneasy, it was a sight how those old 
gray-headed men threw and jerked each other 
around, and tore up straw and upset chairs. Fin- 
ally they both fell in the straw and the old sinner 
released his grip, the Christian brother arose and 
ran to the opposite end of the altar and turned 



Getting in the Brush. 209 

around and shouted victory. The old sinner was 
up by this time and with a big smile on his face 
he threw up his hands and shouted, "Glory to 
God, I am saved!" I took him by the hand and 
said, "Where did you get saved ?" "Just there 
where we fell in the straw." That was a new 
fire to the meeting, and a good one, and we closed. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

A Mysterious. Sermon. Burying An Old 
Quaker. 

One of my greatest difficulties in my evangel- 
istic work has been to know just what to preach. 
My ambition has not been to be a great preacher, 
but to know the mind of the Spirit, and give the 
people just what they needed. I am satisfied with 
a very common sermon or an exhortation if it 
only proves fruitful and brings good results. It 
has never been so difficult for me to preach a ser- 
mon as it has been for me to get the subject from 
which to preach. I have spent hours in prayer 
for God to give me a text or a subject from which 
to preach and I never could get settled until I 
would reach the place for preaching and see my 
congregation. But much of the time I have my 
text ahead of time, and a few times God has given 
my text and then I could think of nothing to say 
on it. 

I remember one time when I was conducting 
a meeting in a Methodist church in Randolph 

210 



A Mysterious Sdrmon. 211 

County, Indiana. They had a large class, but 
very dead spiritually. You could count on the 
fingers of one hand all of the praying people in 
that church, the pastor and his wife included, 
and there wasn't much pray in any of them. I 
had spent a week with them and with but little 
visible result except an increase in the congrega- 
tion ; every available space in the house was occu- 
pied. On our way from a Sunday morning ser- 
vice, I was very much discouraged, everything 
seemed to be so dead. I told the pastor that if 
I could preach a sermon on Ezekiel's valley of 
dry bones, I certainly would do it that night. 
He advised me to do it, and gave me assurance 
that ne would stand by me if I ground their bones 
into powder. I had no sermon on it, I had never 
preached from it, but I felt certain that God had 
laid it upon my heart, and that would be the text 
for the night. 

After dinner I went into my room. I spent 
some time in reading that chapter on dry bones. 
I read it over several times, then I kneeled down 
and spent the entire afternoon in prayer, but the 
more I thought upon the subject the less there 
was in it to me. God had made it clear to me that 
He wanted me to preach from that subject, but 
it was so strange to me that I could not get a 



2i2 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

thought. As the hour for service was drawing 
very nigh, I could hear them coming in from 
every direction. They were singing religious 
songs. It was an anxious moment to me and I 
was about to give up in despair, when I cast my 
eyes down on the floor and there lay a small clip- 
ping from some paper. I picked it up and glanced 
at it and there were three points on dry bones. 
Instantly a sermon spread out before me. I drop- 
ped it into my Bible and prepared for church. 
How that clipping ever got there has always been 
a mystery to me. I never had anything like it 
and the pastor said he had not, and I am sure it 
wasn't on that carpet that afternoon or I would 
have seen it. I have always believed that it was 
sent of God. 

When I reached the pulpit that night I was 
trembling under the power of God, and if ever a 
man preached in the Spirit, I surely did. No 
sooner had I made the altar call than at least one- 
third of that large congregation made a rush for 
the altar. The pastor said he believed that there 
were one hundred souls saved that night. That 
resulted in one of the greatest religious awaken- 
ings that ever struck that country. 

The next day I turned to find my points on 
the sermon and they had disappeared just as 



A Mysterious Sermon. 213 

miraculously as they had appeared. I have never 
seen them since and I can't remember one thing 
that I ever said in that sermon. That was one 
sermon that I never repeated. I have had a few 
sermons that the Lord has given me similar to 
that, but have not been retained for reputation. 

Now in regard to the old Quaker brother. It 
was in a camp-meeting at Cleveland, Ind., my 
home camp. I had known this brother for a num- 
ber of years, he was a good man, but he was con- 
tinually at the altar in every meeting, seeking 
entire sanctification. He wanted freedom and 
liberty, but he would stick his head on the mourn- 
ers'-bench and rub his nose on it until it would al- 
most bleed and you could not get him to hold up 
his head no more than you could a Billy goat; 
and he wouldn't pray. He was a chronic seeker, 
he had become a trial to us all. 

One day just after our camp had gotten fairly 
opened up, when the first altar call was made, I 
looked down the aisle and here came this old 
Quaker. The Spirit seemed to speak to me, "If 
ever that man gets through, he will have to be 
handled without gloves, and you are the man 
that I want to do it." By this time he was at the 
altar with his face buried in his hands. I jumped 
down in front of him, slapped him on the back 



214 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

and spoke to him in a very commanding way, that 
he would have to get what he was seeking for or 
I would wear him out and kill him on the spot 
and bury him out of sight. "Now," said I, "get 
at it," and I began to shake him roughly. When 
I would get a little too severe on him, he would 
look up and grin, as good as to say, "I don't have 
to," but I would shake him more vigorously. Fin- 
ally I became so desperate and used him so rough- 
ly that he concluded that, if he ever expected to 
do anything, it was high time he was at it, for he 
was not going to see an easy time in that service. 
All at once he threw up his head and hands and 
began to scream and pray and in less than five 
minutes God sent a lightning-bolt from pentecos- 
tal skies and struck the old Quaker and knocked 
him on the flat of his back. I gathered up several 
armsfull of straw and covered him as much as 
two feet, and for nearly an hour he lay there 
perfectly quiet. We were then having a testi- 
mony meeting. Suddenly there was an unearthly 
yell down under the straw, and immediately the 
straw flew in every direction, and the old Quaker 
jumped to his feet and gave us a demonstration 
that set the meeting on fire and we closed in a 
flame of holy rapture, and from that day until this 
writing the old brother has had his freedom. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Tobacco-soaked CivAss-i,3ad3rs Rebuked. 

Away back in my early ministry, in my own 
county, not far from where I now live, I was as- 
sisting my pastor in a revival meeting. We had 
only been running a few days. The interest was 
great, this was one among the greatest meetings 
I ever held. The influence of this meeting reach- 
ed far and wide, and hundreds of souls sought 
and found Jesus. The class-leader was the first 
to make the break, but he had to be handled in a 
rough way to bring him to a point of yielding. 
He was a slave to tobacco. He and I had talked 
it over quite a number of times. He was hungry 
for a clean heart ; he was the best man, the most 
spiritual in the whole community, but he could not 
believe it was necessary to give up his tobacco. 
I asked him why he did not get the blessing, if his 
tobacco was not in the way. He had sought it, 
and prayed hard enough for it, but he refused to 
acknowledge that it was his tobacco. He at- 
tributed his failure more especially to his lack of 

215 



216 Thirty-thrive; Years a Live Wire:. 

faith. Sure enough, it was a lack of faith, but 
there was a cause for it, he loved a foul mouth 
in preference to a clean heart, and he wasn't will- 
ing to pay the price. 

I have noticed one thing in my experience, 
that, after a person goes to an altar a number 
of times and don't get through, then I am quite 
certain he has something sticking in his craw that 
he has not swallowed, and this brother had a plug 
of "Star Navy" that he could not get down. 

In our little talk together about the matter, 
I had never been harsh nor cutting, but reasoned 
with him in a brotherly way, that I might help 
him to see that it was his tobacco that was in 
the way, but with no success. Then the Lord laid 
it upon me to deal with him with authority and 
not to be easy about it. 

It was on Sunday morning. We were having 
a testimony meeting, he was the first one on his 
feet. He looked at me with a smile and said, 
"Johnnie, I am going to get there, for I am get- 
ting stronger every day." "Yes," said I, "from 
the way you smell of tobacco, I believe what you 
say. Now sit down and don't you say another 
word until you clean up. God is not pleased to 
have you lisp His holy name with your foul 
mouth; you are nothing but a dirty, filthy, ob- 



TOBACCO-SOAKED ClyASS-Iy£AD£RS REBUKED, 2\J 

noxious professing class-leader." He dropped 
into his seat and turned white with anger. He 
was joined by about forty others with the same 
habit. 

When meeting was out, for awhile, it looked 
as if I was not going to get away from them alive. 
I did not have one single friend, even the pastor 
wanted me to go and confess my wrong to the 
brother, that I had made an awful mistake, and 
I had killed the meeting, and we would never do 
any more good. While I was at a neighbor's 
that afternoon the church people gathered in and 
they made it so hot for me that I had to take 
to the woods to get away from them. I crept 
into a spice-brush thicket, within a few rods of 
the church (the church was in the woods). I 
spent the evening in prayer. The pastor was to 
preach that night. This brother said he would 
never hear me again. I asked the Lord to shut 
up the pastor until he could not preach and give 
me the message, for I knew they would all be 
there, as the pastor had announced that he would 
preach that night. 

When meeting time arrived the people were 
coming in from every direction. I could hear 
them in the dark. They were giving it to me 
good and proper, but, thank God ! I walked from 



2i8 Thirty-thrke Years a Live Wire. 

my hiding-place in perfect confidence that the 
Lord was with me. When I reached the pulpit, 
the pastor said, "Brother Hatfield, you will have 
to preach to-night; I have nothing to say." I 
said, "Thank God! the Lord has answered 
prayer." The house was packed, the Spirit of 
the Lord was upon me. He was in the message, 
and they all heard it; and some of them did not 
sleep well that night, especially my offended 
brother. God was after him. The next day he 
became so desperate that he threw his tobacco 
away, confessed his wrong and got reclaimed; 
came to church that night with a big smile on 
his face, walked up in the pulpit and asked me 
to forgive him, which I gladly did ; turned to the 
congregation and made his confession and told 
them he was now ready for a clean heart and was 
going to the altar at once for the blessing, and 
asked all those who desired to go with him to 
come along. There was a wild rush for that 
altar that soon filled it with weeping, pleading 
penitents. Our brother soon got through and 
he was a marvel of divine grace and possessed 
great power. Every tobacco chewer in that 
house threw away his tobacco, cleaned up and got 
salvation, and in the next few weeks the result 
was hundreds of conversions, and many marvel- 



Tobacco-soaked Class-leaders Rebuked. 219 

ous things of supernatural power were witnessed. 
Again, I was holding a meeting in a little 
village in Carrol County, Indiana, called Yeo- 
man. The interest was good, the people were 
coming, conviction was settling upon the people. 
I had rubbed them up a little about their tobacco, 
and many of them were considerably stirred, 
among them was the leader. One day I was in- 
vited to his house for a meal. We were sitting 
at the table, every little while he would get off 
some cutting remark about tobacco. I said noth- 
ing, but kept praying. As time passed on, he 
became more emphatic, until at last he gave me 
to understand that he would chew all the to- 
bacco he wanted to and he did not have to as*k 
me anything about it; that it was none of my 
business how he spent his money or what he put 
in his mouth. Instantly I felt the Spirit move 
me to rebuke him. I stuck my finger across the 
table in his face and said, "You dirty, filthy, 
chewing, slobbering, spitting, stinking polecat 
of a man, how dare you make such an asser- 
tion? Don't you know that God can make you 
so sick of that stuff that you will never want 
another chew while you live?" His lips quiv- 
ered, and he trembled with anger. He arose 
from the table, went to town and purchased a 



220 Thirty-Three Years a Live Wire. 

pound of fine-cut; came back to the house and, 
in my presence, unfolded it and took a great big 
chew, but in a few moments he had. to retire 
from the house, it was making him so sick he 
could not keep it in his mouth any longer. He 
returned, and repeated the effort the second time, 
but with the same sickening effect, and again the 
third time, but this time he could not put it in 
his mouth, the sight and smell of it made it 
nauseous to him. This was sufficient evidence 
to him that God was taking his case in hand and 
that he and tobacco would have to part, so he 
walked to the stove, raised the lid and threw his 
tobacco in. He was rewarded with a great bless- 
ing and went to the church that night with the 
fire burning in his soul. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

Strange: Leadings and Impressions. 

While attending a national camp-meeting at 
Decatur, 111., William McDonald was in charge. 
The Spirit of the Lord was upon the meeting. 
One day while Mrs. Belle Leonard was preach- 
ing on the subject of consecration, I was sitting 
on the front seat. I was intensely interested, 
so much so that I was lost to all surroundings. 
She stopped in the middle of her sermon and 
gave a little of her experience as to her diffi- 
culties in her consecration, she felt that God was 
calling her into foreign fields, that she must go 
to India. She was willing to go, but her finan- 
cial condition and home ties were such that it 
seemed almost impossible to entertain such an 
idea. Finally she arrived at a decision, when she 
said, "Lord, if you will open the way, I am ready 
to go." In a very short while the way was open. 
She was not long in making her arrangements 
for the voyage and was soon out upon the sea 
sailing for heathen lands. While they were 

221 



222 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

crossing the Indian Ocean they were caught in 
a heavy storm, the ship was so damaged that, 
unless the storm subsided, there was no hope of 
reaching the port in safety; all would be lost. 
Sister Leonard threw her arms around a post 
in the ship and cried out, "My God, Thou hast 
called me to India, and to India I must go. Stay 
the winds/' and in a few moments they were 
sailing on the still sea. 

I immediately said to myself, "I haven't got 
that." As soon as she was through preaching I 
arose and went to my tent, and began to ask the 
Lord for that experience, and for three days and 
nights the devil had a lot of fun out of me, 
tramping me around in the brushpatch in the 
dark seeking for something I never could get. 
One morning about nine o'clock, still on my knees 
in prayer, tired and weary and hungry from 
fasting and loss of sleep, at last I looked up and 
said, "Lord, I must have this." "What do you 
want ?" a voice responded. I stopped for a mom- 
ent and began to think. I scratched my head 
and, at last, in a very feeble voice, said, "Lord, 
I don't know, unless it is to stop a storm on the 
Indian Ocean." The response came at once, 
"You had better wait until you get there first." 
I saw the joke the devil had played on me and 



Strange Leadings and Impressions. 223 

laughed right out, but the Lord was good to me 
and gave me a great blessing that sent me out of 
that tent with my soul full of glory, shouting the 
praises of Jesus, and I had a good time the 
remainder of the camp. 

It often happens that people in seeking some 
other person's experience are liable to lose their 
own. This reminds me of an incident that once 
occurred in my youthful days, when I was but a 
very small boy. It was in the country; I was 
visiting my cousin for a few days. I was always 
a great lover of bread and butter and sugar, and 
I haven't lost the taste for it yet. One day I 
was in the kitchen when my aunt pulled from the 
stove a half-dozen big loaves of warm bread. My 
mouth began to water, I set up a plea for some 
bread and butter and sugar. I was denied, but 
I would not take no for an answer; I was too 
hungry to yield my point. I plead hard and 
finally succeeded, my desire was granted, and, 
to both me and my cousin was handed a large 
slice of bread, with butter and sugar. I was so 
greedy that I wanted both pieces. My cousin 
went to the front porch of the cabin, and I went 
the back way, took off a big bite of my bread 
and stuck the balance in a crack of the old log 
smokehouse and then went around to where my 



224 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

cousin was sitting. He said, "Where is your 
bread ?" I told him I had eaten it all up. I 
sat down by his side and began to beg him for 
a bite, which he willingly gave me. After I had 
helped him finish his up, then to get to my bread 
and get to the orchard without him knowing it 
was the next thing to be considered. I said to 
him, "Would you like to have some more?" He 
said he would; then I told him if he would sit 
right there and not leave, I would go and ask 
aunt for more. I started for the kitchen by the 
way of the smokehouse, but when I got around 
there an old hen had found my bread and was 
just finishing it up, so I lost my bread by try- 
ing to get my cousin's. So many people lose 
their experience in trying to get others'. 

I once went with a man to a livery-stable to 
sell a horse. The weather was cold and I was 
compelled to stay in the office by the fire. There 
were a number of rough men and boys in the 
room. I was not a stranger, some of them were 
my old schoolmates. They were very profane 
in their language. I don't think they did it -with 
intention to embarrass me, but they were thought- 
less from the force of habit. There were times 
when I thought I ought to reprove them, then 
again I thought I should preach to them, or pray. 



Strange Leadings and Impressions. 225 

I was willing to do anyting, but I sat there with 
my mouth shut and said nothing, and left with- 
out a word. I had scarcely gotten out until the 
devil began on me, he accused me of being cow- 
ardly, and charged me with disobedience, and 
tried to whip me over many things, but I felt 
confident that he was charging me wrongfully, 
that I was not wilful, but in the order of God. 
Later on, the Lord revealed to me, that if I had 
done what the devil wanted me to do, I would 
have been casting pearls before swine, and as- 
sured me that I was right by giving me a great 
blessing. 

The next day I was in a big department store 
where the proprietor and the most of his clerks 
were standing in a group. They were asking me 
many questions about my evangelistic work. 
They were more concerned about the amount of 
money I was getting than the number of souls 
that were being saved. They thought I was fool- 
ish in not demanding more pay. They were all 
old acquaintances, and members of church, but 
that was all, that was the extent of their religion. 
I was relating some of my experience when the 
Lord began to pour out His blessings upon my 
soul; I started around that crowd shouting and 
praising God. The little crowd was soon dis- 



226 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

persed and they were very busy in other parts 
of the store. One Quaker girl had nerve enough 
to stay, but she covered her face with a news- 
paper which I pulled away and preached Jesus 
to her. 

As soon as I was out of that store the devil 
began on me about that and said I had overdone 
the matter, but I knew better, and stuck to it, 
until God rewarded me with a fresh blessing 
from above. 

I simply relate these incidents to show the 
reader how the devil works in every way to dis- 
courage the child of God. In doing or not doing, 
how necessary to have that spiritual discern- 
ment to know the will of God. 

Again, in my early experience when the Lord 
was giving me some convictions about church 
entertainments, Christmas trees, etc. I had al- 
ways taken a part in these things until the Lord 
sanctified me wholly. This opened my eyes and I 
saw things as never before. A short while after 
I had received this blessing the Christmas tree 
was suggested and, for the first time in my life, 
I met the committee to discourage them in hav- 
ing a tree, but I was defeated in my purpose and 
they voted to have the tree. I did not turn sour 
and get bitter and go home criticising, but I told 



Strange Leadings and Impressions. 227 

them if they were going to have one I hoped they 
would conduct it in a good religious way, that 
good may come from it and the Lord be glori- 
fied, but they need not count on me for any assis- 
tance, for my convictions were such that I must 
not give sanction to any more church entertain- 
ments. 

Everything seemed to go well until the even- 
ing for the entertainment. Our little daughter, 
about five years old, begged us to take her to see 
old Santa Claus. It was a great disappoint- 
ment for her to stay at home. At last my wife 
and I talked it over, and we concluded that it 
would not hurt us, that we were not responsible 
for it, and it would satisfy the child, so we went. 
We were seated in the "Amen Corner" in the 
end of the house where the tree was. As soon 
as we were settled in our seats some one whis- 
pered to us that the committee had fallen out 
and gone home and there we were without a pro- 
gram, or a Santa Claus, and everything in con- 
fusion. It fell upon the pastor to proceed with 
the entertainment as best he could. We had a 
song and then he called upon me to make the 
opening prayer. It was a great surprise to me; 
there I was, I was in for it, but of all the prayers 
that ever I made that was one over which I 



228 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

turned blind; my brains began to whirl, every 
pore in my skin opened its mouth and poured out 
perspiration until I could feel it running in 
streams down my body. I could not pray for 
the tree, for I did not believe in it, and I could 
not think of anything else but the tree, and if 
ever there was a time when I was up a tree it 
was then, and the way I came down was much 
like Zacchaeus, I fell out, and when I struck I flat- 
tened out. I did not see Jesus, but I saw jump- 
ing-jacks, tin whistles, doll babies, French harps, 
picture-books, popcorn, etc. 

After I had been in my seat for quite awhile 
I was just beginning to breathe some easier over 
my collapse, when a sister whispered in my ear 
from a back seat and asked me if I would be kind 
enough to write that prayer off for her that I 
made in the opening exercise. She said that she 
did not know but what some day she might be 
called upon to offer prayer at a Christmas enter- 
tainment, and she thought the one that I had 
made was so nice that she would like to learn it. 
That was enough for me, I was convinced, and I 
returned to my home a much wiser man than 
when I left. That was thirty years ago and that 
was the last time ; they are still having their trees, 



Strange Leadings and Impressions. 229 

but they are not catching me there to pray over 
the thing. 

About one year after I was sanctified, I was 
still in the drygoods business. The devil said to 
me that I must not teach holiness to my cus- 
tomers. I kept my Bible behind my counter and 
I was preaching to everyone that came in, and 
the devil wanted to put a stop to it, but I was 
determined to let him know that I was going to 
run my store in the manner of the Lord, trade 
or no trade. Just about then one of my best 
customers stepped in and now was the opportun- 
ity to put it to the test. I opened up the subject 
to my brother, he was full of fight and on the 
war-path. I gave Him the Word and kept reading 
to him what God said about it, which was more 
to stir him than if I had said it myself. He could 
not meet the argument, it was God's Word; the 
only thing he could do was to get mad and show 
up the "old man," and he certainly did do that. 
He said many hateful things to me and when we 
parted he went out champing the bits. The 
devil said, "Now you have lost your best cus- 
tomer, you had better kept still." I said, "This 
business is the Lord's and we will run it in His 
name, and to His glory." 

The next morning early he was back at the 



230 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

store, he was still hot under the collar. The first 
thing he said was, "What is my account?" I 
turned to the books and told him the amount, he 
threw out the cash and said, "Mark it off." I 
took the money, gave him the credit and then put 
my hand in the showcase and took out a pocket- 
knife and gave him. He went back to the stove 
and sat down and for two hours he sat there with- 
out a word; he was in a deep study. I was 
arranging some of the dress goods when he step- 
ped to the counter and in a few moments I sold 
him a dress for his wife that cost over twenty 
dollars. He paid the cash, and left for home. 
That afternoon he sent his boy to town for some 
articles and opened up another book account. In 
a few weeks he was sanctified and from that day 
until this he and I have been the best of friends. 
Glory to God! 

If we run our business in the name of the 
Lord and for His glory, He will take care of the 
customers. I sold tobacco, the Lord said I must 
quit; the devil said, "If you do, you will lose 
your trade," but, bless God! I obeyed the Lord, 
cleaned out the tobacco, defeated the devil, held 
my trade, and received a great blessing. It pays 
to walk in the light aud say "Amen, Lord, Thy 
will be done." 



CHAPTER XXX. 

Entertainment, and Incidents. 

No one knows the hardships and privations 
that an evangelist has to endure except those 
who have had experience, and especially one of 
that class who never makes any charge for his 
service, or makes any arrangements for enter- 
tainment. It's a common occurrence to be placed 
with a family where there is no privacy, with a 
house full of children, ill-mannerly and dirty, no 
government or parental authority and all acting 
as if the last one of them had been born on the 
Fourth of July. Now to prepare a sermon under 
such circumstances would be a fine opportunity 
to grow in grace. I can't see how they ever did 
learn to preach, some of us haven't learned much 
— I speak from experience. If it was warm weath- 
er we could take to the woods, this I have done 
more or less all my life and I am still keeping it 
up. Even there we are not free from the vexing 
things, all kinds of crawling ants, and singing 
mosquitoes to keep you slapping and knocking 
while you are trying to think. 

231 



2-\2 Thirty-three Years a Live: Wire. 

I was entertained in a home in southern Indi- 
ana for two weeks. It was a log house twenty- 
four feet square. In it were two beds, one in 
each corner, and two trundle beds, one under 
each bed, a table, a cook-stove, a big fireplace, and 
a few chairs, a man and his wife and eight chil- 
dren; no carpet on the floor. The bill-of-fare 
would be hominy for breakfast, boiled beans 
and fat meat for dinner, and mush and milk for 
supper. We would have Johnnie cake the most 
of the time. The big pot of hominy would last 
for three or four days; it would stand in the 
corner of the fireplace without any cover over it, 
and into its wide-open mouth many objectionable 
things were dropping, but we continued to feed 
from it until we finished its contents. They were 
all professing Christians but the baby, and they 
all had fine voices for singing. When we would 
come home at night after service we would have 
a great time, cracking pecans, walnuts and hick- 
ory nuts, singing and shouting until after the 
midnight hour, then all go to bed and sleep like 
babies until morning. There was only one door 
to the cabin and there weren't five minutes in the 
day it was not opened and shut. One day the 
wooden latch was broken off so that the door 
would not stay fastened. Instead of fixing the 



Entertainment, and Incidents. 233 

latch the father detailed one of the children an 
hour each to stand at the door, open and shut it as 
they passed in and out. This was continued for a 
number of days. I saw they were not going to 
fix the latch, so I fixed it myself and set the chil- 
dren free. 

This is not the only instance that I have been 
entertained in such a way and, while it is not the 
most pleasant and satisfactory for one who wants 
to read and study and pray, yet I prefer this 
racket through the day with no convenience, and 
to have three or four children for bed-fellows, 
if I can sleep well at night, than to have a more 
commodious place and have a bed full of bugs 
that won't let you sleep. It has been my fortune, 
or misfortune, to be thrown into scores of homes 
where these pestilent bed-fellows would not allow 
me to sleep if I stayed in the bed and I would have 
to get out and dress and sit up and sleep in a 
chair. Sometimes I have mentioned the matter 
to the good housewife and she would look at me 
with surprise, and say, "Why, do they bother 
you ?" One woman said, as I started for my bed- 
room, "Now, Brother Hatfield, if there are any 
bugs bother you to-night, I will give you the lib- 
erty to kill every one you find." I thought she was 
joking, but if I would have taken the time to kill 



234 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

every bug I could find in that bed I could have 
been at it all night. It was a very cool night and 
no fire in the room. I dressed myself, put on my 
overcoat and overshoes, and sat up in a chair and 
tried to sleep. Next morning the husband came 
into my room and saw me sitting there. He called 
his wife and they laughed and said, "Do you 
let anything like that bother you ?" I said, "No, 
that is the reason I took the chair instead of the 
bed." 

I was at another place and I was given a 
lovely room, nicely furnished, but the nightly 
prowlers were so numerous and so carniverous 
that I was not in the bed five minutes until a 
whole regiment would jump on me at once, and 
how they did scratch and bite ! It didn't take me 
long to make up my mind to abandon my quarters. 
I slept but little that night. The next day when the 
lady came to my room, I kindly spoke to her about 
the matter, she promised immediate attention, 
but she never looked after it. The next night I 
had the same difficulty, only worse. The lady 
did not seem to be much disposed to believe what 
I had told her, so this time I took a pin and stuck 
it full of the big warriors and stuck the pin on 
the dresser. The next morning she came in, I 
mentioned the matter again. It stirred her, she 



Entertainment, and Incidents. 235 

looked cross and said, "There is not a bug in that 
bed. I have looked over it, and can't find a one." 
Then I pointed to the pin sticking in the dresser, 
and said, "Do you see there? I found those last 
night and that is 'only a drop in the bucket to 
what there is left." Her eyes flashed fire, she 
said, "I have always heard that preachers were 
hard to entertain and now I know it." 

While I am on this subject I want to tell a 
little joke on myself. I had been working for 
several weeks among the coal miners, sleeping 
first one place and then another in their little 
tenement houses, and there were few of these 
houses that were free from these troublesome 
bed-fellows. They had well-nigh worn me out, 
losing so much sleep. I have no recollections of 
trimming my finger-nails while I was there, I 
think I kept them worn off scratching after bugs. 
One night there was a good brother came to a 
meeting I was holding in a schoolhouse. He liv- 
ed ten miles away. I was telling him my troubles 
and he assured me if I would go home with him 
I should have one good night's rest, so I agreed 
to go home with him. He was in a buggy. We 
arrived at his place sometime after twelve o'clock. 
That night, from all appearances, everything 
looked comfortable. I was shown my room and 



236 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

in a very few moments I was in bed. I was so 
sleepy that it wasn't long until I was in slumber- 
land, but I was awakened by a peculiar sensa- 
tion like spiders crawling over me. My first im- 
pression was that it was my nerves, for I was 
quite nervous. I heard a nervous woman say 
once that she had feelings like spiders crawling 
over her. I said, "This is something like that 
woman had," so as I had some Ammonia Elyxir 
for my nerves, I got up and took a dose of that. 
I felt better, I went back to bed but in a short 
time I had this same feeling to return. I got up 
and took the second dose, I felt better at once, 
but when I returned to my bed the same crawling 
condition was repeated. Then it dawned upon me 
that I had surely struck another nest of bugs and 
sure enough, when I lit the light and looked in 
that bed it was alive with hundreds of little, small 
fellows and all full of blood. I took my finger 
and drew it across the sheet and I made a red 
mark over a foot long. I was honest in taking 
my medicine; I thought it was my nerves, but I 
was mistaken, it was something else, I had not 
diagnosed the case just right. That is the way 
it is with a lot of people in regard to religion, 
they are honest, they think they have got it, but 
they are far from it. Some people say it don't 



Entertainment, and Incidents. 237 

matter what they believe so they are honest, but 
I have found out that people can be honest and 
yet be wrong. 

It would require a whole book to describe the 
hardships I have passed through in the past third 
of a century. Cold beds ! Oh ! how often I have 
traveled from one to ten miles in some buggy or 
sleigh after night, coming out of a hot church 
wet with perspiration and mercury ten or twenty 
degrees below zero, and then been put in a bed 
in a cold room between sheets that had not been 
slept in for months, and laid there and shivered 
all night. When you get up in the morning af- 
ter such a night you can't warm up by a fire, you 
have to take some kind of red-pepper stew to heat 
yourself up. 

Not long ago I was put in a cold room, where 
I slept on a straw bed that had iron roofing laid 
on the slats to keep the bed from falling through. 
Every time I would turn over it would rattle like 
the roofs of tin or iron when the wind would 
blow. On Monday morning the old sister boiled 
up a big pot of beans, and at every meal from 
Monday until Friday we had those same beans, 
and they came up cold every time but the first 
meal on Monday. 

Once I was sitting at a table working hard 



238 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

to worry down enough to keep soul and body to- 
gether, When the lady of the house handed me 
a jar of preserves and asked me to have some. I 
looked in and said, "Not any just now." She 
said, "Brother Hatfield, I would be glad if you 
would taste them, I have had them made for a 
good while," "How long?" said I. "Sixteen 
years," was the reply. "And you have had them 
in that jar all this time?" "Yes, sir, I keep them 
for company, but they don't seem to care for pre- 
serves." 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

Obeying the Spirit, How I Got the Title of 
''The Hoosier Evangelist." 

A great many years ago, during the days of 
Dr. S. A. Keen, he was holding pentecostal ser- 
vices at one of our M. E. Conferences. I was 
there. Brother Keen was having pretty hard 
sledding, there was much opposition to his teach- 
ing at that time. He was emphasizing 
the baptism with the Holy Ghost as a 
second definite work. For several days there 
was not a very large attendance, but the 
interest as well as the crowds grew. I was 
so burdened for those preachers that I could not 
sleep at nights. I did much personal work. I 
was so anxious for them to hear this man of God. 

One day we had quite a large congregation, 
I still had the travail of souls, and kneeled in the 
back part of the house and there I told the Lord 
I would do anything He would put upon me, if 
it would break up that meeting and give us a 
victory. Almost instantly I felt the fire go 

239 



240 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

through me from head to foot, my flesh felt hot, 
I sprang to my feet and before I knew what I 
was doing I ran down the aisle shouting at the 
top of my voice, and when I landed at the ros- 
trum there were not less than twenty or thirty 
preachers following me up. The glory of the 
Lord filled the room, the altar was filled and a 
great many were sanctified wholly. From that 
day until this that Conference has been growing 
more and more spiritual, until there are more 
preachers in it who are preaching holiness than 
those who are not. 

At another time I was with Rev. Charles 
Weigele in Danville, Va. We were holding a 
ten-days' convention in that city. I had never 
attended a colored church and I was very anxious 
that I should go to one, so one Sabbath we 
planned to attend a Holiness colored church. 
They were having an all-day meeting. There 
were myself and Brother Weigele and three 
others, a man and his wife and another lady. 
When we entered the house they were praying; 
it was a fair congregation. We took our seats 
where the white people belonged. I wasn't there 
long before I began to feel something creeping 
up my back. By and by I began to feel hot 
flashes rush over me. Then they arose and be- 




My Family in My Early Evangelistic Experience. 



Obeying the: Spirit. 241 

gan to sing, "Swing low, sweet chariot" This 
was too much for me, I jumped over the seat in 
the aisle and took for the front and Brother 
Weigele after me, and we certainly did have a 
time praising the Lord that day. Two of our 
Southern sisters had to get out and walk 
the aisle in that colored church. That blessing 
lasted me for three days. We left while they 
were still in service. I have often wondered 
what those colored people thought when those 
two white preachers were jumping up and down 
in the front part of their church. I was a stran- 
ger to them, I never saw one of them in my life 
before or since. 

At another time I was in New York City. I 
was walking down Broadway. I was very much 
occupied in counting stories and reading signs 
and looking into the show windows. All at once 
there seemed to be a voice speak to me. I said 
something, I don't remember what, but it was the 
Lord who wanted to bless me right there on 
Broadway. I said, "Here am I." Just then the 
glory struck me and I jumped straight up and 
shouted "Glory!" and started for the Grand Cen- 
tral Depot. I laughed and cried and shouted. 
Some would turn and look at me, but little did I 



242 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

care. That was the end of my counting stories 
and reading signs for awhile. 

Ever since I have been in the evangelistic 
work I have gone by the name of "The Hoosier 
Evangelist." Rev. L. B. Kent, who is now in 
Glory, is responsible for it. He gave me that 
title and I have gone by it for these thirty years 
or more. In making my reports in early years 
I would sign "The Hoosier Evangelist," instead 
of my own name. When I would attend the 
national camp-meetings I went by the name of 
"Brother Hatfield," no one knew that I was an 
evangelist. They would ask me where I was 
from, I would tell them I was from Indiana and 
then they would ask me if I knew "The Hoosier 
Evangelist." I told them I did. They asked 
me many things about him and of course I could 
tell them, but little did they know that it was 
he they were talking to. 

One day a preacher, Rev. Geo. Buck from 
Illinois, happened into my tent meeting. He 
was with me a few days. A few months from 
that time I happened into one of the national 
camp-meetings. This Ipreacher was there, he 
was sitting in the pulpit. When I came in and 
sat down he walked down to me, pulled me out 
of my seat and lead me to the rostrum and turned 



Obeying the Spirit. 243 

me to the preachers and said, "Brethren, I want 
to introduce you to 'The Hoosier Evangelist/ " 
Some of them said, "That is Brother Hatfield." 
He said, "That may be true, but this is also 'The 
Hoosier Evangelist/ " so they found me out. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

Reports of Meetings to My County Paper. 
In Boston Among the Bean-eaters. 

I left the old Hoosier state the second day 
of January, and landed here on the night of the 
third. I had a quick ride, a fine trip, and a "hal- 
lelujah" time. We began meeting the next day 
in the first Evangelical Church, in Cambridge, 
a city of a hundred thousand, a suburb of Bos- 
ton, with the Charles River as the dividing line. 
This river was Longfellow's favorite stream, he 
loved it so much that he bought all the land be- 
tween his house and the river, so that no one 
could put an obstruction in the way and shut off 
his view. What a blessing to Christians, so 
called, if they would be so considerate as not to 
allow obstructions in their access to the "River 
of Life." Many of them have a plug of tobacco 
over one eye and a bottle of whisky over the other, 
until they could not see their nose though 

244 



In Boston Among th£ Bsan-eaters. 245 

scorched in the glass of the sun. No wonder 
they complain of their eyesight and say they can't 
see as some do. 

We visited the Longfellow homeplace and saw 
the home of the famous author. We stood at 
the spot on the bridge where he composed the 
poem: 

"I stood on the bridge at midnight, 
As the clocks were striking the hour, 

And the moon rose o'er the city, 
Behind the dark church tower.' ' 

I was over the road where Paul Revere made 
his famous ride more than a hundred years ago. 
I visited his tomb and the old North Church 
where he belonged. I climbed up the old winding 
stair one hundred and fifty feet to the tower 
where Robert Newman, the sexton, hung the lan- 
tern as a signal for Revere to make his ride and 
warn the people of the approaching enemy. 

There are many things about this church that 
were of much interest to me. While it is aged, 
yet it is in a good state of preservation. It is 
an old landmark, they want to preserve it for 
its antiquity. They have the same old Bible 
presented them by King George in 171 7. The 
old pipe-organ and the clock that hangs on the 



246 Thirty-thrss Ysars a Live Wire. 

wall and the chime bells that swing in the bel- 
fry are making music and keeping time with as 
much harmony as in days of old, more than two 
hundred years ago. They have been faithful in 
every performance of duty ; they may have grown 
formal, but have never been known to backslide, 
always punctual and in their place and never fail- 
ing to give their testimony. What a delightful 
thing it would be if a pastor could say that of 
his church, but it's, 

" Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; 
Prone to leave the God I love. ' ' 

Methodists call it backsliding; Baptists cail it 
wandering; Presbyterians, a little cool; Episco- 
palians, a little off; Christians, overtaken in a 
fault ; Hard-shells, out of order ; Holiness people 
say they have lost the keen edge, but it's all the 
same. 

If the faithful pastor, after the big meeting 
is oyer, could only hitch his members up to the 
post of honest dealing in business, and go back 
and find them at the post of brotherly love, at 
the post of Sabbath-keeping, at the post of family 
prayer, at the post of prayer-meeting and class- 
meeting, it would not be a year until the angels 
could light on this old world or fly through its 



In Boston Among the Bean-eaters. 247 

atmosphere without holding their nose in weep- 
ing transit. But the pastor will hitch them up, 
and then come around later; there hangs the 
bridle against the post, but the good Lord only 
knows where they are — out capering over the 
plains with zebras, bronchos, bucking Texas 
wild steers, and striped asses, saddled and sub- 
jects to be ridden by anything that can catch 
them. 

The pews of this church are antique and of 
English origin, they are boxed and lined, both 
back and seat, and a door at the end of each 
one; the pulpit is primitive, very high and nar- 
row, and a stairway leading to the top, and from 
it some of the greatest orators in the ministerial 
ranks have preached, such men as John and 
Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Bishop As- 
bury, etc. I had a curiosity to stand there my- 
self, so I mounted the stairway and ascended to 
the top. I had a fine view of the galleries and 
the auditorium below. It was a model church in 
its day. 

In the back part of the room on the lower 
floor are two high seats where a. couple of breth- 
ren sat; they were called "Beadles." They had 
a couple of long sticks, one of them had a fox- 
tail fastened on the end of his stick. If he saw 



248 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

any of the sisters nodding or going to sleep it 
was his duty to slip down the aisle and tickle 
her nose with the fox-tail. On the other side, 
if any of the brethren looked drowsy, it was the 
duty of the second beadle to slip down the aisle 
and wrap them on the head. This was a part 
of history I had never learned before, it was 
entirely new to me. That old custom is a thing 
of the past, but I notice that the same disease 
is still prevalenttamong our church-members even 
in these days, and it is still a problem to some 
ministers how to avoid it. The best thing I have 
ever struck is to call on them to pray; as a rule 
that is pretty sure to wake them up. 

Next are the tombs under the church. I have 
read of the Catacombs of Egypt, but never 
dreamed of such a thing in Boston. The sexton 
took me below, and we walked among the tombs 
and read epitaphs of people buried there over 
two hundred years ago. Some of them were 
very noted characters and conspicuous during 
the time of the Revolution. There are over 
seven hundred bodies that lie beneath this church. 
I was permitted to look into one of these tombs, 
it had been piled full of bodies- and it was a sad 
picture. I refrain from the description. 

There are a number of old cemeteries in the 



In Boston Among ths Bi^an-eaters. 249 

city, some of them in the very business center, 
surrounded by immense business blocks ten and 
twelve stories high. I was in one at Copps' Hill, 
where the English had their batteries planted 
during the Revolution. There were the marks 
of the bullets where they had struck the tomb- 
stones during the battle. There are 130 tombs 
around the cemetery and some of them fifteen 
feet underground and full of dead bodies, be- 
sides ten thousand buried in graves. Among 
the oldest I saw was that of Isaac White, de- 
ceased 1661. 

"Stop here, my friend, and cast an eye, 
As you are now, so once was I ; 
As I am now, so yon must be; 
Prepare for death and follow me." 

Another historic place — I speak of Bunker 
Hill. I walked over its summit, looked at the 
tombs that marked the resting-place where brave 
men fell and bit the dust for their country's 
cause. It made me think of my youthful days. 
When a boy at school, I studied this history 
never thinking I would ever visit this memorable 
spot. I stood under the elm-tree where George 
Washington took command of the American ar- 
my, July 3, 1775. I visited the army post and 
navy yard. What a contrast between the arms 



250 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

then and now, what an advancement in the equip- 
ment of warfare. They were making anchors 
for battleships, weighing eighteen thousand 
pounds apiece, at the cost of eleven cents a pound. 
They were making chains for the anchors, 240 
links, one foot to each link and two inches and 
a quarter in diameter and weighing seventy 
pounds apiece, at a cost of $6.50 each, and the 
chain must stand a test of 558,000 pounds before 
leaving the yards. I saw them making ropes. 
The size they were making while I was there 
was two and three-quarter inches in diameter, 
seven hundred feet long and weighing 1750 
pounds, at a cost of seventeen cents a pound. 
This is a medium rope to some they make. 

Faneuil Hall is another place of historic inter- 
est, named for its doner, Peter Faneuil, a wealthy 
Boston merchant, who erected and gave it to the 
town in 1740 for a market and town house. 
Upon its rostrum have stood most of the states- 
men and orators of America. Within its walls 
some of the most stirring scenes connected with 
the American Revolution were enacted-. Prior 
to the Revolution the eloquence of the sturdy old 
patriots did much to shape the action of* the Colo- 
nies. All down the years it has been the custom 
for the citizens to go to Faneuil Hall to consider 



In Boston Among the Bean-eaters. 251 

matters of stirring interest, as they have ap- 
peared. The Hall has been generally known as 
the "Cradle of Liberty." Over the rostrum is a 
picture, 16 x 30 feet, costing $40,000, represent- 
ing Daniel Webster replying to Robert Haynes 
in the United States Senate, June 26, 1830. 

There are other matters of great interest, 
but time and space will not permit. 

Cambridge is a college town, the well-known 
Harvard University, with its five thousand stu- 
dents, occupies the center of the city. It is Uni- 
tarian in its faith. They don't believe in a Hell, 
but some of them have enough brimstone in their 
hearts to start one on earth. It's a hard place 
to hold- a meeting. The atmosphere is preg- 
nated with unbelief and devilism. Protestant 
preachers exchange pulpits with Unitarians. 
They try to hold protracted meetings together. 
They call them "ethical revivals." They are not 
the kind we read of in the first of Acts. It's 
all head religion and no heart. They get salva- 
tion like some people get the mumps, on one side, 
the outside. They are like pins, you can't stick 
them in over the head. All head and no heart. 
They don't know half as much about God as 
Balaam's ars. 

That reminds me of one of these big-headed, 



252 Thirty-thrsk Years a Live Wire. 

sensational preachers, who advertised his sub- 
jects in advance from which he was to preach. 
They were, "Daniel/' "How is the Score?" "He 
Held An Aceful," "How Was the Show?" "Who 
Is That New Girl?" "Has She Struck the City?" 
"Let Us Have a Game of Pool," "Are You Try- 
ing to Make a Mash?" If he had added one 
more title, "The Preacher Is An Ass," the list 
would leave nothing to be desired. 

Now for our meeting. It has been nearly 
five weeks since I came here and we have had 
some hard battles. The devil has been deter- 
mined that an old-fashioned, Holy-Ghost revival, 
with holiness and Hell-fire preaching can't be had 
in this town; he has tried every way to defeat it. 
For the first three weeks the meeting progressed 
with great power, the devil was stirred, he went 
to the police department to have it stopped, but 
failed. Then to the mayor of the city, but was 
defeated there. Then he sent in a lot of row- 
dies to break up the meeting, which resulted in 
a great fight in the church. This greatly af- 
fected the meeting and we never reached the 
climax that we were all looking for. However, 
it was a blessed meeting, one of great power and 
victory. (The description of this meeting is 
given in a previous chapter.) I go from here 



In Boston Among the Bean-eaters. 253 

to Maiden, Mass., another suburb of Boston, to 
assist Rev. John Norberry, the pastor. 
Yours in the Holy War, 

John Thomas Hatfieu>. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Feathers for Sharp Arrows. Two Meet- 
ings — One in Indiana and The 
Other in Illinois. 

Perhaps it is about time for the readers of 
the "Republican" to get a few lines from my pen 
once more, and ascertain my whereabouts, what 
I am doing, and how I am getting along. Christ 
said, "Ye are My witnesses," and this is one 
way I have of testifying to a big congregation. 
Some people don't like my testimony. Well, 
that's no cross to me, I have noticed that such 
fault-finders usually wear their religion like some 
people wear a wart on the end of their nose, with 
great difficulty and much embarrassment, and 
will fly off' the handle when you prescribe a reme- 
dy that will cure it 

Well, my wife and I, in company with my 
two singers, Rev. H. L. Phillips and wife, started 
for California on the first of January, expecting 
to hold meetings on the way and land there about 
the first of May, but from the number of calls 

254 



Feathers for Sharp Arrows. 255 

we are getting, and the engagements we are 
making, it begins to look as if we would never 
gtt there. 

Our first meeting was at Francisco, Ind. 
There is quite a boom in this section of country; 
speculators are leasing land for coal, they are 
also developing quite a good deal of oil and gas. 
The bottom land is fertile, producing from 
seventy-five to one hundred bushels of corn to 
the acre. The old yellow hills are poor and only 
fit for grazing, the green mistletoe grows in 
abundance on the elm trees, and presents a fine 
picture in winter. Pecans and persimmons are 
plentiful. We enjoyed a number of rich feasts 
from the fruit. The people are social, clever, 
and good livers, but like everywhere else, with 
but little religion ; the almighty dollar is absorb- 
ing the time of nearly everybody. "But what 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul?" 

We had a good meeting at this place, quite a 
number were saved, but we had a fight at the 
beginning. "Old Carnality" did not want to be 
disturbed, he wanted to rest in his little cradle 
of cold formality and good-for-nothing-do-little- 
ness, and have us dope him with soothing-syrup, 
sing him a little lullaby and rock him to sleep. 



256 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

But bless God! we upset the cradle and spilled 
the babies out ; some of them had whiskers, some 
of them had their heads over one end of the 
cradle and their heels over the other. There 
was a great cry, but little wool, as the man said 
when he sheared the old sow. 

One woman, with a cracker on the end of her 
tongue, jumped up and shook her fist, and said 
she had as much religion as anybody, and she 
sinned every day; that her mother was a good 
woman, and she proposed to go to Heaven on 
her mother's religion. That's too much like some 
people who are going to Heaven on a tombstone, 
who live a Christless life, die a Christless death, 
are wrapped in a Christless shroud, put in a 
Christless coffin, buried in a Christless grave, and 
have a tombstone erected with an angel on it 
pointing to Heaven, "Gone to rest." 

Another woman jumped up and with a look 
on her face that would have soured Jersey milk, 
ran into the vestibule, stamped her feet, and 
heaved a few sighs that sounded like the escap- 
ing gas from a sewer pipe, and said, "If I was 
a man, I would slap his jaws." 

By this time things were getting pretty hot, 
the thermometer had run up to about 100. Some 
of the saints were getting a little nervous, but, 



Fkath^rs for Sharp Arrows. 257 

as Paul said, "None of these things move me." 
I knew that God was in it. 

Another young lady was so convicted she ran 
out of the church and started for the train intend- 
ing to leave the town, but God was after her. She 
ran through the street and over the yellow-clay 
hill for the depot throwing mud like a wild Texas 
steer, arriving at the station just in time to get 
left ; she could have touched the train as it pulled 
out. A few days later she was saved and is now 
one of the happy girls of the town. 

These are some of the luxuries of an evangel- 
ist's life who will dare to be true to God, regard- 
less of consequences. The preacher that will de- 
nounce sin in these days will hear from the devil, 
and the person who does commit sin is not much 
in his way, he serves a big devil and fights a little 
Christ. But the Christian who is free from sin is 
serving a big Christ and fighting a little devil. 

Our meeting closed with victory; the disturb- 
ing element cooled down, and accepted the truth, 
and went to work, and the result was a few dia- 
monds in the rough were gathered. 

We left for Mapleton, 111., a few miles west 
of Peoria. This is a little village of two or three 
hundred, on the Illinois River, an old coal-min- 
ing town with two enterprising stores, two flour- 



258 Thirty-three: Years a Live Wire. 

ishing dancing schools, two prosperous saloons, 
one postoffice, and one little blackslidden church 
with about a handful of members, with a debt 
that has been hanging over it for twelve years. 
From the looks of the chinaware in the old cup- 
board in what should be the "Amen Corner" of 
the church there is a ladies' aid attachment 
to dish up messes to feed depravity to make the 
goats pay for the pasturage of the sheep. What 
a shame ! The sisters think they are doing great 
work for the Lord when they are dishing out 
ham and eggs and oyster stews to drag through 
people's stomachs to get a quarter out of their 
pockets to keep up expenses that their stingy 
husbands won't do. What a church like that 
needs is pentecostal salvation. Imagine Mary 
and Martha handing up to Peter on the Day of 
Pentecost an announcement for an oyster supper 
in the basement under the Upper Room : "Every- 
body come and let us have a big time." 

I am told there are twenty-five confirmed 
drunkards in this place, and there are about thirty 
regular daily dram drinkers and tipplers. A 
good place for a missionary. 

The second night the Lord saved an old sin- 
ner seventy years old. He threw away his tobac- 
co, confessed his sins and got right with God. 



Feathers for Sharp Arrows. 259 

The same night, while the Lord was convicting 
and convincing this old sinner, the devil was get- 
ting in his work on some backslidden church- 
members. When people are guilty how naturally 
they take things to themselves. Of course we had 
the Gospel plow in and plowed right through some 
of their posy beds and turned out some big Ameri- 
can beauties. One said I stuck my finger at him 
while I was preaching and he knew I meant hirn. 
A woman said I looked right at her and every- 
body knew it was her. Another one of the ladies 
said I clapped my hands, and she did not believe 
in doing that in the church (except at an oyster 
supper) and she wasn't coming any more. There 
were a few sympathizers felt that they must con- 
sole their brother and sister and they went out 
saying that it was too bad that they should have 
their feelings hurt in that way. How many souls 
are driven to the devil by a lot of grandpaps and 
grandmothers that go around with a bottle of 
soothing-syrup for these souls that have been 
wounded by the Word of God when they should 
let them alone and tell them to get right with 
God and then they would not be getting hurt so 
much. I am getting sick and tired of this shilly- 
shally, wishey-washey, namby-pamby kind of re- 
ligion; there is so much useless, fruitless stuff in 



260 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

these days. The Church is suffering for men and 
women that are full of the Holy Ghost and on fire 
for God. We are looking for victory, the lame 
and the halt are coming back and getting right. 
Thank God the day is breaking and victory is 
ours. 

Your Brother, 

John Thomas Hatfield. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Sinners, 
Kickers, Buckers, and Good People. 

In our last letter to the "Republican" we had 
just arrived in Lewiston, 111. This is a nice little 
city of three thousand, and the county-seat of 
Fulton County. The soil is black, deep and fer- 
tile and ranges in price from $100 to $200 per 
acre, owing to location and improvement. Lew- 
iston is not much overdone by much industry. 
It has two railroads, a number of churches and 
good schools, no manufacturing of any con- 
sequence and no saloons. They voted it dry about 
a year ago, but, from the conduct of some of its 
citizens on the streets, it was plain to be seen that 
somebody was still dealing in wet goods. But, 
"Woe unto him that putteth the bottle to his 
neighbor's lips," for "cursed is he that hungers 
and thirsts after strong drink, for he shall be 
damned." 

There are only two things in this universe 
that are not subject to law, one is the liquor traffic 
and the other is the carnal mind. When they are 
reduced to subjection to law they cease to exist. 

261 



262 Thirty-three Years a Live: Wire. 

Getting men to use wiiisky and tobacco is one 
of the devil's ways he has of taking up a collec- 
tion. 

Our meeting was held in a big Methodist 
church with a large membership and but little 
love. It was split up into factions, and each fac- 
tion wanted to be bell-sheep and boss, and be- 
cause some of them could not get in the lead and 
tinkle the bell,«they wouldn't be sheep at all — they 
had turned goat and gone into the bucking busi- 
ness. I've noticed one thing, when a mule begins 
to kick, he doesn't do much pulling. 

The poor pastor, I felt sorry for him. He 
wanted to do the right thing, but his load was 
more than he could carry. He had a choir made 
up of gum-chewers, theater-goers, euchre-play- 
ers, dancers, and holiness-fighters, and what 
to do with them was a problem that made 
him scratch his head until it was nearly bald. 
It reminded me of a man who had a calf in his 
barn and a couple of Irishmen went there to steal 
it. The owner of the calf got word of their com- 
ing. He also had a pet.bear ; when night came on 
he took the bear to the barn, removed the calf and 
tied the bear in its place, and then climbed up in 
the barn to watch for the thieves and enjoy the 
surprise. Later on in the night two men appear- 



Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma. 263 

ed at the door of the barn. There was a halt and 
some little whispering. At last one of them was 
heard to say, "You go in and get the calf, and I 
will stay out and watch." "Very well," said the 
other, and he ventured in. He was gone long 
enough to get a dozen calves, when the outside 
man, getting a little nervous, ventured to the door 
and said in a low tone, "Faith, an' Mike, have you 
got the calf yet?" Mike gasped and spoke in 
low tones that sounded like the soft murmur of 
water escaping from a bathtub. "No, Jamey, me 
boy, the calf has got me." 

Surely our preacher was in equally as bad a 
fix; the calf had him. Poor fellow! he was in a 
bad fix. He was in the hole, had a big load and 
a poor team to help him out. His team reminded 
me of a mule, a goat, a bumblebee, and a pole- 
cat — a kicker, a butter, a stinger and a stinker. 
He said to me, "Brother Hatfield, the pulpit is 
yours; if you can do anything, in the name of 
Jesus do it," and he meant it, for he stood by me 
loyally. Well, bless the Lord! I could only see 
one way out, and that was to draw the sword of 
the Spirit and wade right into them and cut right 
and left. 

For the first few days it was a hot time. There 
was a big lot of kicking and buzzing, but we 



264 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

Our next place was at Jefferson, Okla. Now 
this land here is all right for those that like it, 
succeeded in hobbling a few mules, breaking a 
few legs, knocking the horns off of a few goats, 
pulling the sting out of a lot of bees and driving 
some pole-cats out. It was a great time, I was 
in the height of my glory. I laughed and shout- 
ed until my sides were sore. However, in a few 
days the smoke of the battle cleared away and 
things quieted down. They began to fall in line 
and we had a fine meeting; souls were saved, 
backsliders reclaimed, believers sanctified, and the 
church greatly helped. We were there three 
weeks and the last night we closed with nineteen 
at the altar. 

We next came to Willis, Kan., a little town 
in Brown County, in the northeast corner of the 
state. This is regarded as the banner county of 
the state for rich and deep soil. I admire this 
part of Kansas very much. We spent two weeks 
at this place, had a pleasant time visiting the peo- 
ple and a very successful time in the church. 
There was unity among the members. There 
were good workers, and we had quite a number 
saved. We closed with twelve seekers at the al- 
tar. The pastor continued the meeting, as the 
interest was too good for closing. 



Iujnois, Kansas, and Oklahoma. 265 

it is increasing rapidly in value. They raise corn, 
oats, alfalfa, but mostly wheat. From what I 
can learn, this is a good wheat country. It is 
subject to drouth, and is now very dry. The 
second night we were here we were visited by 
a dust storm that lasted for five hours and blew 
at the rate of eighty miles an hour. A great 
many were frightened and ran into their dug- 
outs. I didn't go — I had none to go to, good 
reason. That was one time in my life I wasn't 
sorry that I was a Christian, and glad that I 
wasn't a holiness-fighter. The house I was in 
was a new cottage ; it was shut up tight, but the 
dust came with such force that it was like a fog 
in the house. Every time I opened my mouth I 
got a taste of dust, and for five long hours I had 
to eat dirt and wonder what was coming next. 
Now if these people like this I am perfectly will- 
ing for them to have my place. 

I'm glad my home's in Indiany, 
And flyin' cars to take me back; 

There creeks and woods have got a tongue 
These lonesome prairies lack, 

For there's nothing here but silence, 
Except the never-ending bark 

Of these pesky little prairie dogs 
That keep it up from dawn till dark. 

Ye haint no wish for livm' 

In this here windy clime, 
It blows your eyes plumb full of dirt 



266 Thirty-three Years a Live: Wire. 

And puts you almost blind. 
But away back there in Indiany, 

Where the streams twist and turn, 
There the sun has trees to shine on 

And the autumn colors burn. 
There's no place to me like Indiany, 

Just along that national road 
"Where lots of houses are built along 

And people in them you knowed. 
Where telephone and electric lines, 

They make you feel so glad 
When you get sick and almost die, 

The doctor's easy had. 
You'd die, I know, if you'd get sick, 

In this here far-off clime, 
For the doctor's sure to make it late 

On a bucking broncho line. 
Give me old Indiany, there's 

Notfiing like that Hoosier state, 
For crops of every kind, and water good, 

And gravel roads first rate. 
Indiany 's next to Heaven, 

An' that's my place for a home; 
If there's those that don't like it, 

I'm willing they should roam. 
There's just two places I know, 

That I 'm sure I dearly love, 
One's in old Hoosier Indiany 

And the other's in Heaven above. 

We held a three weeks' meeting and had a 
great revival. Many souls were saved; they 
were a hungry people and loved the plain old 
Gospel truth. Amen! 

Yours for Jesus' sake, 

John T. Hatfield. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

In the South, Tobacco, Negroes, and Church 
Kickers. 

Well, glory to God ! Here I am way down in 
old North Carolina, the old pine-tar state. I 
haven't seen much tar, but oceans of tobacco. I 
promised the editor, when I left, that I'd write 
him a few sketches for his paper when I came 
to this country. There are some people who say 
they don't like to read these reports, yet they 
carry the paper in their pocket, and lend it to 
their neighbors to read, and then sit and chew 
the rag while they read it. It isn't hard to tell 
what denomination they belong to. They are 
a lot of goats that have fallen in with the Lord's 
sheep, that hope to get to Heaven on some other 
one's religion. You can always tell them for 
they are in the bucking business ; they have a gal- 
lon of words to a spoonful of grace, especially 
if you should press them to a life of holy living. 

Some people say they don't like John Hatfield. 
I'm not looking for eulogies now, I'll get them 

26^ 



268 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

after I'm dead. Fm after poor lost souls. It 
takes less religion to criticise than anything else 
in the world. I have tried it and when a man 
tries and proves anything, he knows what he is 
talking about. I'll confess that I am not brainy 
or good looking, but if you don't watch out, the 
devil will get you. 

Now for the trip. I left Indianapolis, March 
30, in company with Rev.. C. F. Weigele, who will 
be my co-worker while in the South. We took 
a Big Four train for Cincinnati at 3 P. M. ; in 
three hours we were in Cincinnati. At 9 P. M. 
we took the train called the "Fast-flying Vir- 
ginia," over the C. & O., to Clifton Forge. We 
crossed the river into Covington and went up 
the Kentucky side. It was certainly a beautiful 
sight to look across the river into Cincinnati and 
see the hundreds of electric lights up and down 
the streets and on the hillsides. But we were 
soon out of sight and there was nothing more 
to see and we ordered the porter to prepare our 
beds. We committed ourselves to God and the 
engineer, and went to sleep. When we woke up 
next morning and raised our blinds, we found 
ourselves in the mountains, winding our way up 
the Kanawa River. We arrived at Clifton Forge 
at noon, and here we turned our watches ahead 



Tobacco, Negroes, and Church Kickers. 269 

an hour and changed cars for Lynchburg, twen- 
ty-five miles down the James River, where we 
changed again for Danville, Va., where we held 
our first meeting. 

In our travels through Virginia we saw but 
little stock and a poor quantity of that. It wasn't 
like riding through Indiana or Illinois. This 
country turns out cattle like some of our colleges 
turn out preachers — the biggest part of them is 
their head. We saw but little grain, small 
patches of wheat and corn. The blades of corn 
are stripped from the stock and bound in bundles, 
the ear is jerked in the shuck. The field looks 
like it was set out in little cane fishing poles. 
They stack their grain around a pole and many 
of the stacks looked as if you could cover them 
with a tobacco hogshead. The farmers live 
principally in log cabins, and some of them have 
the appearance of a hundred years old. The soil 
is red, and a good portion of the people are 
black. The roads are fearful, especially in the 
winter and spring. The vehicles coming to town 
look as if they were painted red. 

There is much travel over some of these 
roads. The country is thickly settled and the 
trading points not so many. People come a long 
way to market, many of them have two or three 



270 Thirty-thrse Years a Live Wire. 

days' journey. They have little wagons with 
Carolina scoop beds. Their produce is largely 
tobacco. You will see some great outfits — rope 
lines, leather wood strings. I saw an old col- 
ored man riding down street in a cart with an 
old ox hitched to it. The shafts were fastened 
at the ends into each end of the yoke. He had 
about a tubful of tobacco, going to market. 
He had a smile on his face and was as happy 
as a king. Perhaps he had come thirty miles. 
We went out of town twelve miles to pray 
with a sick person, and the roads were so bad 
we were a half day getting there, but we were 
paid for going. The neighbors had heard of our 
coming and they had gathered in. This is a 
great country for people to go to meeting. You 
have no trouble for crowds. This was a humble 
little cabin home, no carpets and but little fur- 
niture, with an old-fashioned fireplace, and a 
hole in the log for the cats and dogs to go in 
and out. I never met a class of people that ap- 
preciated the Gospel as these people do, and 
they have religion in the old-fashioned way. 
Some of these people in their cabins know more 
about God in five minutes than the most of 
people in their big fine churches know in a life 
time. Many of these people have no education, 



Tobacco, Negroes, and Church Kickers. 271 

but they are blessed with good mother wit, and 
they are nobody's fool by a long way. 

There is some superstition among the more 
ignorant class. They believe in horse shoes, 
buckeyes, forked sticks, brass rings, etc But we 
never found a more sociable and hospitable 
people, they can't do enough for you, all classes 
rich and poor. I am much in love with these 
people. They are the most unselfish people I 
ever met, and when they get saved they are going 
to go straight for God if it costs them every- 
thing they have. 

One man, a tobacco raiser, was saved and 
sanctified. He was convicted it was wrong for 
a Christian to chew tobacco, so he quit it. He 
then said if it is wrong to chew it, it is wrong 
to raise it, so he took his whole crop out and 
piled it up in a pile and burned it. The sinners 
laughed at him and asked him what he would 
do for a living. He said he would trust God, 
and it wasn't a week until he had a position in 
a big cotton factory that made him more than 
four times his tobacco. I say, Amen ! The per- 
son that trusts God will never come to want. 

While I am on the tobacco question, I will 
speak further. Danville, Va., has three hundred 
tobacco houses and I was told that 165 of that 



2J2 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

number were manufacturers of some kind of to- 
bacco — plug, snuff, cigars, cigarettes, etc. Here 
is where the "Bull Dog" plug is made, and if you 
were to see it made you would want a dog's 
stomach to chew it. I visited one of the fac- 
tories and they had four hundred negroes in 
their employ. It requires a temperature of 92 
degrees to work the tobacco ; this keeps the rooms 
very warm, and the hands who work by the 
piece and not by the day, work hard and fast, 
and the perspiration flows freely. I saw the 
great drops of sweat dropping from their nose 
and chin into the tobacco they were working. 
Many of these women used snuff. Imagine the 
yellow saliva running from their mouths down 
on to the end of the stick and then dropping into 
the tobacco. That's extra flavor thrown in! 
Nearly everybody down here uses it, but Chris- 
tians. The real child of God has no use for it. 
Women dip snuff and smoke cigarettes. They 
have a little stick three or four inches long, they 
chew one end of the stick until it is soft, that 
answers for a brush, then they rub that brush 
into their snuff box and then stick it into their 
mouth, that's the sugar spile for the juice to 
drip off. Some of them don't use sticks, they 
pull their underlip out and pour the snuff in from 



Tobacco, Negroes, and Church Kickers. 273 

the box between their lip and teeth. You can 
tell that kind by the lip they carry. That's the 
way we can tell a holiness-fighter, by the way he 
carries his under lip. Say, how would you like 
to kiss a woman with that kind of a lip ? I have 
wondered, since being down here, if ever these 
husbands kissed their wives. Of course, it's no 
trouble for a woman to kiss a man with his jaw 
full of the stuff and the juice dripping from 
his lips. She has become habituated to that until 
she must have a stomach like a buzzard. 

Some one has said there are three things that 
use tobacco, a worm, a goat and a man. What 
a procession ! See them coming down the road, 
the worm in the lead, the goat next, and the 
man behind. I used to belong to that company, 
but I got salvation, broke ranks and left the 
gang. I have seen preachers use it on the sly, 
who thought no one knew it. One preacher 
said, who had been hit by the sermon, "How do 
you know I use tobacco?" "Well," said the 
leader, "I will answer you by giving you an inci- 
dent of a young couple. The young lady said 
her lover was a mind-reader for he could tell 
every time she had been eating onions." John 
Wesley, in writing to his Methodist preachers, 
said, "Cleanse yourselves of lice, cure yourself 



274 Thirty-thrke Ye;ars a Live: Wir£. 

and family of the itch, use no tobacco." What 
a triplet, a worthy combine — lice, itch and tobac- 
co! The luxuries of Methodism are forbidden. 
What a cross! 

These people live well down here. They have 
plenty to eat. Cornbread is the staple article. They 
have it for breakfast, dinner, and supper, in 
season and out of season and all the time, and 
it comes up in good shape, and in as many ways 
as there are kinds of religion, and you don't have 
to ask an interpreter to tell you what it is, 
it's good old cornbread. I got so mixed up in 
a dining-car once with French names that I 
didn't know "up." I lost my appetite, and ex- 
cused myself on account of not feeling well, and 
they charged me a dollar for coming in the car. 
That is like some of our modern revivals. 
People don't know what they are getting, in 
fact they get nothing. Perhaps they sign a card, 
or hold up their hand, or join a meeting-house, 
but that is not being born again; no change in 
that, that isn't from darkness to light, and from 
the power of Satan unto God. They still train 
with the old gang, get mad, chew tobacco, vote 
for whisky, run to the circus, to the opera, the 
ball room, the card party, and the little giggling, 
dissipated socials. Oh! I like to see people get 



Tobacco, Negroes, and Church Kickers. 275 

so under conviction that they will cry out, "Men 
and brethren, what must I do to be saved ?" 
They will not come to the altar with their hand- 
kerchief over their eyes, and rub their nose on 
the bench until it almost bleeds, and stiffen their 
necks until you can't lift their heads with a 
pole. No, bless, you, they will throw up their 
heads with tears in their eyes, and weep, and 
pray, and groan their way to the cross and get 
something that will drop from the sky into their 
souls, that will put an end to all desire for these 
sinful things. 

Now to the meeting. Brother Weigele and 
I found the church very much divided over a 
couple of leaders ; both wanted to be "bell sheep" 
and lead. There seemed to be no way to adjust 
the matter, so we turned them all out, and reor- 
ganized and took in only those who would be will- 
ing to be governed by the church rules, and then 
we had a good meeting, and God blessed us and 
owned His Word, and gave us quite a number of 
souls. 

Yours under the Blood, 

John T. Hatfield. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

'More About the South. Politics, Religion, 
and People. 

As I have a little leisure time this morning, 
I will take this opportunity and give to the read- 
ers of the "Republican" a few incidents occurring 
since my last letter I wrote you a few weeks ago. 

We were in Winston Salem, N. C, seventeen 
days. During our stay there we were enter- 
tained by an ex-Confederate captain, who had a 
lovely house, and a more hospitable man I never 
met. He was a Christian gentleman of the high- 
est type. His father was the owner of one thou- 
sand slaves when the war closed, and the big 
mansion still stands and is in good repair. It 
is antique, but gives every appearance of much 
cost in by-gone years. They were members of 
the Southern aristocracy and no doubt enter- 
tained many royal guests. I was told George 
Washington visited this place at the time he was 
President. 

The Moravians are some of the early Chris- 
276 



POLITICS, RSUGION, AND PEOPI.E. 277 

tians of this country and still abound in great 
numbers. They are the same class of people who 
gave John Wesley light on experimental salva- 
tion. They were on a ship at sea in a storm, 
singing and praising God without fear. This 
was a rebuke to John Wesley. Though he was a 
preacher and a missionary, he saw they had 
something he did not have, and like every honest 
preacher should do, he confessed his lack and in 
a short while found the Pearl of Great Price. 
This was the secret of the success of this great 
man's life. If we had more preachers like John 
Wesley, that would seek and find salvation, they 
would have much greater success in their lines. 
Too many of them are up in the sycamore-tree, 
that don't want to come down to receive the 
Lord Jesus Christ. They want to spend their 
time with a telescope viewing for claims in Mer- 
cury and Mars, when God's Word plainly tells 
them of two other countries, one of which they 
are sure to go to. You don't see much honey on 
their lips. They are spending too much time with 
Latin verbs, Hebrew phrases, splitting Greek 
roots and superintending church machinery — 
Endeavors, Leagues, associations, aids, concerts, 
gymnasiums, reading circles, busy bees, broom 
drills, etc., and not a soul saved. Perhaps a few 



278 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

join church on probation, but when the time ar- 
rives for full membership, it would take a hun- 
dred class-leaders and fifty local preachers to 
hunt them up. Don't you know if I was running 
a thrashing-machine I would have my eye on the 
grain spout and if I saw nothing but dust and a 
lot of hulls coming out, I would sing the Dox- 
ology, pronounce the benediction and quit. 

But I want to speak further about these Mor- 
avians. From what I can learn, they are not 
what their forefathers were. Their zeal is more 
for show and not for souls. They are like a good 
many Methodists, have lost their experience and 
gone back on John Wesley. These are nice peo- 
ple and good citizens. They have a form of 
godliness, but without the power, they have great 
respect for the dead and Easter is their greatest 
day in the year. Their cemetery is simple and 
plain in arrangement, the married people, males, 
are all buried in one lot to themselves, the mar- 
ried females to themselves, the single persons 
male and female are buried in separate squares; 
no family lots; every grave the same size and 
nicely sodded. The graves are close together and 
in straight rows, no standing monuments, all the 
same size, about two feet long and eighteen inch- 
es wide and laid flat on the head of the grave. 



Politics, Religion, and Psopu:. 279 

The day before Easter the cemetery is full of 
friends cleaning the headstones until they are 
as white as snow. At twelve o'clock at night 
they begin to parade the streets with brass bands 
and play on every street corner in the city. At 
daybreak they all assemble on the campus near 
their college and have a short service, then 
march to the cemetery, play their bands and hold 
another service, then decorate the graves at sun- 
rise with all kinds of flowers. Next, all march to 
their different churches and spend the day in 
some kind of exercise prepared for the occasion. 
I walked out into the cemetery that morning 
and it was a beautiful sight. I have never seen 
so many flowers since I was at Pasadena, Cal. 
They tell me there were from five thousand to 
ten thousand people at some of these sunrise 
decorations. They passed by my window into 
the cemetery and from the way they thronged 
the street all on foot, I concluded the above state- 
ment must be correct. This is quite an old bury- 
ing-place, I noticed where some had died in the 
seventeenth century. The tombstones were worn 
and the letters were nearly obliterated. This was 
all very nice, and it is right they should pay re- 
spect to the city of the dead, but if you had an- 
nounced a sunrise prayer-meeting for the salva- 



280 Thirty-three; Years a Live Wire. 

tion of souls, you could have put the whole mass 
of them into a tobacco hogshead and then had 
plenty of room for jumping and shouting. 

It's amusing to me sometimes, and it is sad, 
to see so many church people take such great in- 
terest in everything else but the real thing 
which the Spirit would call them to do. They 
are so busy, busy, busy with their machinery, 
wheels, cogs, levers, bands, pulleys, etc., and souls 
going to Hell all around them, and they, to all 
appearances, perfectly oblivious to such condi- 
tions. I would be afraid that God Almighty would 
pronounce judgment upon me for the sin of in- 
difference. They are like EzekieFs valley of dry 
bones, too dead to rattle. They profess to have 
grace, but their lives prove that they have not got 
much. 

Now a few words in regard to our meeting. 
It was in a big tent in the heart of the city, a 
town of thirty thousand. The preaching was 
confined largely to two subjects, Hell and Holi- 
ness. There was a great deal of Hell-fire preach- 
ing, and many souls were snatched as brands 
from the eternal burning. Our last day was a 
marvelous day of victory. The big tent was 
crowded to its uttermost and many standing 
around the edge of the tent. We had four ser- 



PouTics, Religion, and P^opix 281 

vices that day, three in the tent and one in the 
Methodist Colored Church. We had eighty at the 
altar that day in the tent as seekers for pardon or 
purity. Many old sinners were blessedly saved 
and were made happy in Jesus. I haven't time 
to tell you about the colored church. I was the 
preacher and you can guess at the balance. It 
was a large church and the house was full. The 
meeting lasted three hours and I was about done 
up when it closed. They would jump up and 
shout while I would be preaching. I won't tell 
you what I did, but I wasn't far behind the band 
wagon. Bless God ! I just know if I was to hold 
a meeting 'for the darkeys Pd be sent home in 
a coffin before a week or translated like Elijah. 
Before we closed the service one old, white- 
headed man got up and said, "Brethrens and sis- 
ters, eber since de foundation ob dis church hab 
been laid, dar hab neber been a man dat has come 
into dis church and hab taken de liberties dat dis 
man hab, so I moves you dat we all come up an 
shake hands wid him. Now you all's know what 
I mean by shaking hands." And then they all 
rose up and made a rush for me and began to 
shake hands and every one of them left a small 
piece of money in my hand, mostly nickels. I 
could not hold them in my hands. I just piled them 



282 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

down on the pulpit and when I got home Brother 
Weigele and I counted them out and I had a little 
over $9.00. That is better than I get sometimes 
in a white church in two weeks and in a rich 
community. 

Well, I have got some more to tell you yet. 
We closed up at this place and went to Marion, 
N. C. Here Brother Weigele left me the second 
day and returned to his home in Indianapolis, be- 
ing suddenly called on special business. Here I 
was left alone to fight the battle of the Lord sin- 
gle-handed. If I had been one of those despond- 
ent fellows that easily get the blues, I would have 
failed right there, for it seemed to me we had 
gotten to just about the edge of nowhere, at the 
foot of the Big Smokey Mountains in western 
North Carolina where abound ignorance, super- 
stition, moonshiners and red-eyed whisky and 
people that hate holiness worse than the devil. I 
am so glad I don't hate holiness, I belong to a 
more respectable crowd. But bless God! I un- 
sheathed my Jerusalem blade, tuned up my ram's 
horn, sounded the alarm of battle and waded in. 

Our meeting was held in the chapel of a 
Bible training school and orphans' home on a 
mountain just outside the city. The building 
was built for a hotel, in modern style, and has 



Politics, Religion, and People. 283 

over two hundred rooms in it. A company built 
it for a summer resort and it proved to be a fail- 
ure. They expected a railroad to come through 
and it did not come. It stood idle for a long time, 
when at last a Christian lady felt called of the 
Lord to establish a Bible training school, and an 
orphans' home in connection with it. So she pur- 
chased the building, paid a few dollars down and 
gave a mortgage for the balance, and started 
up business, the children soon began to come in. 
This is her fifth year and she now has over one 
hundred on the roll, many of the children are 
from four to twelve years old, no father, no moth- 
er, no relations. Just picked up from the streets 
of some of our cities and sent to this woman of 
God to take care of. She has about twenty or 
thirty boys in their teens. She has purchased 
190 acres of land, and is teaching the boys 
how to work, but they only have one horse 
and two cows. She is in need of good ex- 
perienced leaders at the head of the different de- 
partments. She has now a good teacher for the 
common school and also a good teacher for the 
Bible school. She has some of the worst chil- 
dren sent her that ever were born under the sun, 
but it is marvelous to see how quickly she gets 
control of them and they are about as nice a lot 



284 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

of children as I ever met. She is giving them 
the strictest religious training. She teaches them 
that Christ is their all and in all. She seldom 
ever calls a physician when they get sick. The 
first thing is to pray with them and about nine 
times out of ten they are cured through faith in 
Christ. The whole work is carried on by faith. 
Every dollar that comes into this home comes 
through faith, every bite they eat comes the same 
way. One morning the breakfast bell was slow 
in ringing. I stepped to my door and enquired 
of one of the little boys in the hallway the cause. 
He replied that the Lord had not sent their break- 
fast in yet and they were all in the chapel pray- 
ing for Him to send it in. I hastened to the 
prayer-meeting, found them all on their knees 
crying and praying for the Lord to send in their 
breakfast. It was a touching scene to see some 
of those little four-year-olds, with their little 
hands up and the tears running over their little 
cheeks while they prayed. Their prayers were 
answered. Their breakfast came, and about ten 
o'clock we were all around the table praising God 
for answered prayer. This is a new experience 
to me. I have found this to be a great place to 
get rid of money. They never beg, or ask you 
for anything, but they have a way of praying 



Politics, Religion, and People. 285 

that gets right down into your heart and opens 
your pocket-book. I shall always thank God for 
directing me to this place. If some people that I 
know who are living in luxury could only look on 
this scene for five minutes, they would deny them- 
selves of some things and help these children to 
get an answer to their prayer. The address is 
Miss Mattie Perry, Marion, N. C. 

In regard to our meeting. We had a grand 
time. I had a crowd of good workers. I 
wouldn't give some of these children for a whole 
meeting-house full of some professors I know. 
These children have got salvation, and that is 
what many churches haven't got. We had good 
crowds at night. They would come slipping in 
from the pine thickets until I would wonder where 
on earth they came from, until I got a guide and 
spent a day visiting up in the mountains and I 
found them covered with people, both black and 
white. They live in little cabins with two or 
three acres cleared around them for a truck patch 
and some fruit trees. They have little, narrow 
paths through the bushes from house to house, no 
wagon roads and no wagons ; they travel on foot. 
They usually have an old plug of a horse or a 
mule, and some of them have an ox to do their 
plowing ; dogs and children abound in abundance. 



286 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

Some of the cabins have no floors in them. For 
a bed they drive a forked stick in the ground and 
place a pole from the fork to a crack in the wall, 
then lay a few poles along on that and throw a 
shuck mattress on top, then crawl in and sleep 
as sweetly and soundly as it they were in a palace, 
and on beds of eiderdown. 

Many of them cook out of doors when the 
weather is suitable. I could not tell you how 
palatable the food would be ; I did not stop to dine 
with any of them, but from the looks of the big, 
fat, greasy children, it must have done the work. 
If some of our Hancock County women, who are 
not much disposed to work, would like to learn 
the art of housekeeping without much labor, I 
would advise them to come this way and take a 
few lessons. 

My guide told me that further out in the 
mountains you would find some who never heard 
of Christ and who would ask you who He was 
and where He lived. He said not far away was 
a little log gristmill the owner of which thought 
they were doing a good business when they 
ground four bushels a day. 

One remarkable thing of this country is the 
climate. The people are very healthy. I was 
told by two or three parties that people never die 



Politics, Religion, and People. 287 

here. I thought, what a fine place for a preacher 
and how nice for a sinner, but that would not 
hold good, for I saw a graveyard. They tell 
a joke here about a party traveling through the 
mountains. They came up to a log cabin and 
found an old man with a head as white as snow, 
behind the house weeping. They asked him what 
he was crying about. He said his father had 
whipped him. They asked him for what reason, 
and he said for insulting his grandfather. As 
they went further into the mountains they met a 
circuit preacher on foot, leaving the country; he 
looked like he had not had a square meal in a 
month. He said, "I'm done with this country. 
I preached my last sermon last night. In my 
closing remarks I said, 'Brothers and sisters, I 
bid you all farewell. You don't love each other, 
I haven't married any of you ; you don't love me, 
for you haven't paid me my salary. Your dona- 
tions were rotten apples and dried pumpkins. "By 
their fruits ye shall know them." You don't die, 
for I haven't preached any of your funerals. I'm 
called to a better charge ; I'm to be chaplain of a 
penitentiary. "Where I go ye can not come now. 
I go to prepare a place for you." God have mercy 
on your souls !' " 

There was another thing that impressed me 



288 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

very much and that was the decay of the chest- 
nut trees. They are affected at the root. The 
cause is in the soil. The limbs are all dying in the 
top. Right here would be a good place to make 
a point on some of the declining churches that are 
losing their anchorage and looking bad in the 
top. It is worldly disease that is sapping their 
life and rendering them fruitless. But methinks 
I hear a voice from behind the fig-tree. It's the 
bleat of a goat, "Now why don't John Hatfield 
let the Church alone and talk about the sinners ?" 
That is just what he is doing. Poor thing! has 
not got salvation enough to discern the differ- 
ence between a sheep and a goat, but it's give it- 
self away, and it can't grow wool. 

Now I'm not fighting churches. They are 
all right, wihat is not wrong. I believe in church- 
es, but not in sin. I am true to my church when it 
is true to God. Ask my pastor, he knows me, 
he has my address, Beulah Heights, Canaan 
Land, on the corner of Hallelujah and Jumping 
Streets. I am in this war to fight against the 
devil. I have no more regard for him dressed in 
black behind the pulpit, or in the choir dressed 
in low neck and short sleeves, than I have for him 
in white behind the bar, or in the scarlet house 
with low neck and short skirt. What is the differ- 



Politics, Rkugion, and People. 289 

ence? Sin is sin, and I say, Uncover it, pull off the 
mask and show up What is under it. Now some 
will drop their heads and point their nose at the 
rotten place in their heart. God made man with 
his face up and taught him to say, "Our Father," 
but he has a big job on his hands When he tries 
to make his face look honest when his heart says, 
"Now you know that is a lie." Let him get his 
old gizzard right and he will have no trouble 
with his face. That is the cause of wbmen spend- 
ing so much time in front of a looking-glass, rub- 
bing on lily-white. Their hearts condemn them 
and they are trying to cover it up. 

There is another thing you will see in Caro- 
lina, but you can see the same in Indiana, an ox 
and a mule hitched up together. I said, There they 
go, a saloon-keeper and a sky-scraping preacher. 
The devil has his yoke on them and is walking 
behind with a big gad laying it on. The mule with 
his heels in the air kicking and the bull with his 
nose on the ground bellowing, one end kicking 
prohibition and the other end hooking it. He is 
driving them to the poles to vote for whisky. 

As I called at these cabins I would give the 
children some pennies, and that would tickle them 
almost to death. How they would show their 
white teeth and their faces would shine, and their 



290 Thirty-three Years a Live- Wire. 

eyes would look like two white marbles in a 
bucket of tar. One penny could make any one of 
that crowd happy. I have seen people worth 
millions that never have a happy day. 

There are many more things, but I must stop. 

Yours in the Holy War, 

John T, Hatfield. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 
More; About the Southland. 

It was on the afternoon of June the 19th, in 
company with Rev. J. C. Williamson, that we 
pulled out from the Union Depot at Indianapolis 
on a Big Four train via Cincinnati for Way 
Cross, Ga., to hold a camp-meeting. The trip 
was accompanied with scenes of interest. It was 
at a season when nature was at her best. 

One of the interesting features of the trip 
was the rapid progress of the growing crops. 
We were four days making the trip, including 
the stop-overs. When we left home corn was 
only a foot high; at Way Cross it had matured 
and was ready for use. Oats, at home not half 
grown, at Way Cross had been harvested two 
months. Melons, etc., were hardly up in Indi- 
ana ; in southern Georgia they were ripe. 

The temperature of the weather Was very 
perceptible. We could feel the marked change 
as we advanced toward the South, and for the 

291 



292 Thirty-three; Years a Live Wire. 

first few days at Way Cross we suffered much 
with the heat. 

On our way through Kentucky and Tennessee 
We were on a very fast train, the road was crook- 
ed and dotted with tunnels, we were kept busy 
blinking our eyes and holding ourselves to the 
seats. There was some very rough country and 
some that was very beautiful. One man got a 
cinder in his eye and could not see it. That is 
like religion, you see the Holiness people riding 
along on the Gospel train, they are having a good 
time and everything looks beautiful to them, but 
an old holiness-fighter says he can't see anything 
in it. No wonder, he has a cinder in his eye. 
What a blessing to get that cinder out, you can 
enjoy the ride so much better. 

Our first stop was at Chattanooga. We ar- 
rived at six o'clock, found a good hotel, cleaned 
up, had a good supper, spent the evening with 
the Salvation Army, witnessed the saving of one 
soul, returned to our hotel, had a good night's 
rest, got up early the next morning, looked over 
the city, went out to Lookout Mountain, walked 
to the top — quite a climb, a big job for a hot day, 
but we got there. Here we found a mammoth ho- 
tel and many very beautiful residences. It is. 
quite a fashionable place and high toned. I don't 



More About the Southwest. 293 

know so much about the tone, but it is certainly 
high. 

This is one of the historic places of the Civil 
War. It was one of the strong fortifications of 
the Confederate army. Some of the old cannons 
are still there yet and they are just as good as 
ever, but they have no explosives about them. 
They are not in war now. How many old church 
professors are like those old cannons, sitting 
around on the breastworks of an old battlefield 
telling about what they did fifty years ago, but 
now they are powerless, and the devil is no more 
afraid of their old brass cannons than a yearling 
bull would be of a popgun. One little sleepy devil 
could lay in the belfry and keep charge over a 
whole church full of such fellows. 

In the afternoon we took a car for Missionary 
Ridge and Chickamauga Park, a distance of eight 
or ten miles. These are two well-known battle- 
fields in the history of the rebellion. Forty-two 
years have passed away since these battles, but 
they are as fresh in my memory as if it were yes- 
terday. I could scarcely pull away, such was the 
interest. The Government has taken charge of 
the place and has beautified the grounds, made 
driveways, erected monuments, put up bulletins 
and finger-boards, giving descriptions of the lines 



294 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

of battle, and the commander in charge, and the 
number killed and wounded, missing and taken 
prisoners. All the timber is preserved, the marks 
of war are plain to be seen. The old pines and 
oaks are still giving witness ; they bear the marks 
of shot and shell. This was a historic day to me. 
I had read of these battles in my boyhood days, 
at the time when the fight was on. I was not a 
soldier then, but I am now, I am in the war 
against sin and the devil, and it takes more back- 
bone, grit and grace in these days to stand 
straight for God and declare against sin, than to 
shoulder a musket and go to war. There are men 
living to-day who were in those battles and fought 
bravely, who are now members of church and 
make a profession of religion and yet they are 
so cowardly they are afraid to let their wives 
and children hear them pray. 

Our next stopping-place was at Atlanta. We 
were not there long until we found the barracks 
of the Salvation Army. We attended some mis- 
sions and we witnessed the saving of more souls. 
What a difference in men ! Some are hunting for 
the saloons and brothels, others are hunting for 
the missions and places of soul saving. "They 
that are after the things of the flesh do mind the 



More About the Southwest. 295 

things of the flesh, and they that are after the 
Spirit the things of the Spirit/' 

Atlanta is one of the beautiful Southern 
cities, and an up-to-date town. After spending a 
day and a night in the city, we continued our 
journey for Way Cross. On our way we passed 
by the monument erected in memory of Captain 
Andrew Rader, who made that daring exploit 
during the Civil War in capturing a railroad 
engine and running it ninety miles through the 
enemy's country. This same engine is now at 
Atlanta on exhibition, but she is a thing of the 
past, she is doing no work, pulling no loads, mak- 
ing no thrilling adventures, whistling at no 
stations, no fire in the box, no escaping steam, not 
on the main line, but on a little side track and is 
what engineers call "dead." She's very, very 
quiet, is a spectacle to be looked at, not for what 
she is doing, but for what she was. She's a "has 
been." Has the reader any recollection of any 
old church professors that remind you of this old 
engine, who have quietly nestled down on a little 
side track with an empty boiler and a fireless 
furnace, no coal in the tender, and the water tank 
dry? The whistle is there and the bell is in the 
rack, but the engine is gone, the life has de- 
parted, no one holds the rope, and all that is left 



296 Thirty-thrks Years a LivSWir^. 

is the memory of a past experience, forty years 
ago. Just an old "has been." 

"I want you to know 1 that I am a Methodist 
and I've been rocked in a Methodist cradle," he 
says. HoW proud he is of his pedigree; hear him 
brag on his dyed-in-the-wool Methodism; that is 
what the Pharisees said when they were boasting 
about their Father Abraham. About all they have 
left of him is his nose, and you can find them in 
the back allies dealing in cheap clothing, and yet 
God said He would raise up better things from 
a stone pile. 

Way Cross is a county-seat, a business center, 
a railroad town, has a population of over ten 
thousand, is quite a health resort, people come 
here for asthma and consumption. The people are 
generous and social; the soil is sandy, the yards 
are bare, no grass to cover them ; they manufac- 
ture a great deal of turpentine and rosin; the 
stock is very inferior, the hogs are of the old elm- 
pealer type and the cattle are small and about all 
head and very poor. If some of these little 
scrawny steers could look on a big pasture field 
of some of our fine Polangers, or short horns, 
as they jumped and played around in the tall 
blue grass, they wouldn't believe it. No, sir, they 
would stick their heads down and look through 



More About the Southwest. 297 

about the first crack of the fence at the capering 
short horns and say, "I'm disgusted with all 
such conduct, that's all put on, I never felt that 
way in my life." No, he never. Just like some 
old tobacco-soaked church-professors that have 
lived on dry pasture so long that they are so 
lean in their souls they reel as they walk, and 
when they come out to a Holiness meeting and 
see some of the spiritual, stall-fed, sanctified 
Christians clapping their hands, shouting and 
praising God, they sit back with their heads hung 
down, looking through their fingers, and show- 
ing the white of their eye, then mutter out and 
say, "I'm perfectly disgusted with all this. I 
never felt that way in my life." Thank God 
that's one time they told the truth. 

The camp-meeting was not as good as some 
others we have attended. The location was not 
favorable, it was too far out of town and the 
weather was so hot the people could not get out. 
However, our labors were not in vain; we had 
some fruits. God was with us and souls were 
saved and sanctified. 

Yours for Jesus' Sake, 

John T. Hatfieux 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
Across the Rockies. 

I left home on the 18th of September for a 
campaign across the continent; not for Bryan 
or McKinley, but to preach Jesus Christ and 
Him crucified. He hasn't promised me an office 
but a mansion in the skies. Some of you Re- 
publicans that voted for McKinley and almost 
wore your throats out shouting for him will be 
disappointed in getting an office, but thank God ! 
I am working and shouting for One who never 
disappoints. He has promised me a crown and 
a building not made with hands, "and He is 
faithful who has promised," and I am determined 
that no one shall get my crown. 

For five weeks I held meetings on the eastern 
slopes of the Rockies, at Denver, Cheyenne, 
Georgetown and Colorado Springs, preaching 
on the streets and in the missions, and was much 
blessed of God in His work. Here I was per- 
mitted to witness some of the old-time pentecostal 
meetings that we read about in the days of our 

298 



Across the Rockies. 299 

fathers. Wicked men and women fell like dead 
people under conviction's power, drunkards and 
harlots were brought to Christ and saved. Such 
work as this is my heaven on earth. How I do 
enjoy seeing these poor, miserable, wretched souls 
made happy in Jesus ! 

My first meeting was at Denver. Here we 
had a great time ; the power of God was mighti- 
ly upon the people and many souls were saved 
and sanctified. Our next meeting was at Chey- 
enne, a city in a very barren country; but little, 
if any, vegetation grows within fifty miles of 
this place. It's a railroad town and the shops 
are what make the place. They have a number of 
churches and they are much like the country, 
dry and useless; they don't rejoice and blossom 
as the rose. Our meeting here wasn't so good, 
but yet we were blessed with good fruits. God 
honored His Word and souls were saved. 

Next we went to Georgetown, a city of two 
thousand, fifty miles west of Denver. Here is 
where the famous Loop is made by the Colorado 
Southern Railroad, a rise of a thousand feet in 
two miles. I was here a week holding meetings 
at night and exploring the mountains in the day. 
One day I took a ride to the top of Argentine 
Pass, over thirteen thousand feet high. It was 



300 Thirty-three: "Years a Live Wire. 

covered with snow and a venturesome trip. When 
I got near the top the air was so light my pony 
could only go a few yards at a time without rest. 
When I reached the top it was frightfully grand ; 
I felt curious. To look down into the canyons 
would almost make your head swim. All around 
you for hundreds of miles could be seen the 
peaks of these great mountains, the tops all cov- 
ered with snow; it made me feel like I wanted 
to hold on to something that was fast. I shall 
never forget this trip, this was a little nearer 
Heaven than I had ever been before, and yet I 
was not out of range of the devil, he was up there, 
but I had the shout of victory in my soul all the 
time. 

My next place was at Colorado Springs, a 
very beautiful city, many places of interest to be 
seen around. I was at the Seven Falls, North 
Canyon, Garden of the Gods. I also visited Man- 
itou at the foot of Pike's Peak, where the iron, 
soda and sulphur springs are. Spent a few days 
in mission and street meetings, saw a number 
of souls saved. 

I had a pleasant trip across the mountains 
save for one accident at Tennessee Pass, on top 
of the Santo Christo Range. We were in the 
snow and it was blowing cold. A broken rail 



Across thk Rockies. 301 

threw the train from the track, we had quite a 
smash-up, my car was thrown across the track 
and was pretty well used up ; fortunately no one 
was hurt very badly. In a time like that a man 
doesn't feel sorry to know that he is a Christian 
and prayed up. They were several hours clearing 
up the wreck, the passengers suffered much from 
cold, but they were good-natured and took it pa- 
tiently. 

We were so delayed that we could not con- 
tinue our trip without riding on Sunday, so I 
stopped off at Salt Lake City Saturday morn- 
ing. This gave me a chance to visit some of 
the places of interest. I went to the Salvation 
Army that night. I gave them a talk and one 
soul was saved. On Sabbath morning I at- 
tended one of the prominent orthodox churches. 
There were about two hundred present. The 
preacher read his sermon. His text was Mat- 
thew 12: 20: "A bruised reed shall He not break, 
and smoking flax shall He not quench." It was 
a suitable text if he had applied it to himself. 
Poor fellow! If he had ever had any fire, the 
devil had turned his hose on it and reduced the 
flame to a smoking smudge. He made prom- 
inent the omnipotence of God and His almighty 
will In his illustrations he used the figure of 



302 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

the great trip hammer, the great American cata- 
ract, the silent power of the great forest, and 
many other wonders we see in nature. He told 
us what God had done, and some things He 
could have done, he said God could have made 
a wire stem for a rose, adorned the petals with 
diamonds, lined the leaves with gold and hung 
their tips with sapphires and onyx. The poor 
fellow could tell us how God could clothe the 
flowers, but not how to clothe the poor sinner. 
He made prominent God's power in nature, but 
said nothing of His power to save from sin, not 
a word about the Blood, or about Jesus Himself. 

In the afternoon I visited the Mormon Tem- 
ple. There were about eight thousand present. 
They did talk a little about Christ at this place. 
Unless these orthodox churches get a pentecos- 
tal baptism upon them, they are going to make 
slow progress reforming these Mormons. I was 
at the tomb of Brigham Young. Saw his 
palatial homes where some of his widows now 
live. 

Before daylight Monday morning I was on 
my way Westward. It was a long, wearisome 
day, the scenery was monotonous, mountains, 
sand and sage brush. The next morning we 
struck the fruit land in California. I fell in 



Across the Rockies. 303 

company with a big cattle man, he told me many 
things about cattle. I listened to him for an 
hour or so, then I told him I wanted to talk to 
him about what I was doing. He listened to me 
with great interest as I told him my experience, 
then he asked me how I got my living. I told 
him I made no charges for my services, but 
trusted God to supply all my needs. Just then 
the train whistled for Sacramento, it was about 
nine o'clock A. M. They stopped thirty minutes 
for breakfast. The old rancher said, "Come, let 
us go and get some breakfast ; if that is the way 
you preach the Gospel, it's my time to help a 
little/* He took me into a restaurant and said 
to the waiter, "Give this man the best things you 
have in the house." 

On our way to San Francisco I had another 
chance to talk to him about his salvation. When 
we arrived at San Francisco he took me to the 
best hotel in the city. I spent a day and a night 
in the city; was with the Salvation Army on 
the street and preached for them in their bar- 
racks. The next day I started for Riverside, 
558 miles south. On my way down I was priv- 
ileged to lead a young lady to Christ while rid- 
ing on the train. I spent a week in Riverside, 
visiting friends, held some cottage prayer-meet- 



304 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

ings, got a few souls saved, then went to Los 
Angeles. Held two meetings in the First Naza- 
rene Church, the first meeting twelve days and 
the second meeting twenty-eight days. These 
were both great meetings, there were about five 
hundred seekers at the altar. This is a great 
church. I was blessed almost to death while I 
was with these people. I made over five hundred 
visits in the cities of Los Angeles and Pasadena, 
and I saw Heaven in a great many of these 
homes. I never was any more royally enter- 
tained in my life. I shall never forget my visit 
to Southern California. 

When spring opened up I started back East 
for home, stopping along the way and holding 
some meetings. The day I left home my first 
grandson was two days old, when I returned he 
was walking around a chair. 

Your Brother in Jesus, 

John T. Hatfieu). 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 
More: about the Rockies. 

It has been some time since the "Republican" 
family has read anything from me in its columns, 
so I will now give you a few items. Perhaps 
some cold church professors would prefer not 
to read this. I would advise them, if they do 
not want to see their photograph, to pass it by. 

During the past summer I have worked in 
eleven camp-meetings, in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, 
and Kansas. Closed the last camp-meeting Sep- 
tember the 20th. We had planned a campaign 
for the fall and winter through Oregon, Wash- 
ington, California, Arizona, New Mexico and 
Texas, but, as my wife was disappointed in get- 
ting to go, on account of my mother's feebleness 
in old age, myself and singers, Rev. A. L. Phil- 
lips and wife, pulled for the West to campaign 
Colorado during the fall and winter. 

We landed in Denver September 23rd and 
began business at once. We spent twenty-five 
days in the city preaching on the streets and in 
missions. While we were in the city they had 

305 



306 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

their annual street carnival. The parade was 
a mixture of Indians and cowboys, dudes, flirts, 
harlots, saloon bums, and church professors; 
such a scene of indecency is more than I can 
describe. I never saw as many fools in one day 
in my life. If it had all been of the world we 
could have said, "Let the children of the devil 
do the works of the devil," but to see church- 
members mixed up with the ungodly thing is an 
evidence that they care little for the association 
of angels. The child of God who parts from 
the right is pretty sure to get left. 

But Denver is not the only place where mas- 
querade displays are given, where church-mem- 
bers and worldly sinners participate together. 
I have heard of the like in central Indiana. Now 
if the Lord should bless a soul and he should 
jump up and say, "Glory to God!" these same 
church masquerade jumpers would brand you as 
a crank and a fanatic. No wonder there are so 
many churches not having revivals. They are 
so mixed up with the world, the flesh and the devil 
that you can't tell a sheep from a goat. The 
world has lost confidence in the nominal church 
work to-day, lodge-bound, society-bound, Hell- 
bound. The devil has them hoodwinked and is 
leading them to the pit as fast as he can. 



More: about the Rockies. 307 

Colorado has woman's suffrage, the election is 
just over, but the liquor traffic goes on just the 
same. The women, like the men, fight prohibi- 
tion and vote for whisky. 

We spent a few days in Colorado Springs 
preaching on the streets and in missions. Saw 
some very hard cases come to Christ and get 
saved. Here we witnessed some marvelous ex- 
periences. What a great thing this salvation is ! 
It works such a wonderful change in a person's 
life. We visited many of the places of interest 
around the city, was on top of Pike's Peak, 14,141 
feet high. That is getting up some. We vis- 
ited the Garden of the Gods. You can see all 
kinds of imaginary animals outlined on the rocks. 
It reminded me so much of how people read the 
Bible. While it says, "Whosoever is born of God 
doth not commit sin," these sinning church-mem- 
bers say that means to sin a little every day. When 
it says, "He that commiteth sin is of the devil, ,, 
they say, "I am not of the devil, but I will sin 
a little." Shakespeare says, "There is no sin 
that men commit but what some person can bless 
it with a text." 

We left Colorado Springs for Cripple Creek. 
Here we witnessed some of the most beautiful 
mountain scenery we ever looked at, and per- 



308 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

haps the highest railroad in the world. It was 
raining, our train passed up through the clouds, 
into cloudless sunshine. How beautifully this 
illustrates the Christian life. The Christian lives 
above the clouds and storms of a fretful, sinful 
life. Thank God for an altitude to live in where 
there is perpetual sunshine ! 

Cripple Creek is said to be the greatest gold 
district in the world. The mountains are full 
of holes where the miners have been prospecting 
and digging for gold. Some are made rich, and 
many are made poor. Not one in a hundred finds 
it rich, hundreds have been here for years and 
gotten nothing, and still they keep digging away, 
and they talk to you as if the next shot would 
develop a mine of gold. Oh ! if people would seek 
salvation with this same earnestness, they would 
not be long in striking a gold bank more valuable 
than Stratton's which sold for $11,000,000 after 
mining the best of it out, and he died and left it 
all behind, but thank God ! the Christian can take 
his with him. 

This city is in a high altitude, 10,000 feet 
above the level of the sea. The air is so light that 
it makes it difficult about breathing when you 
exercise much. I got blessed one night and took 
a big spell of shouting and I like to have lost my 



'More -about the Rockies. 309 

breath before I knew it. They tell me a little 
higher up you can't cook beans or potatoes by 
boiling them. It snows up there about every 
month of the year, and at no time is it very warm. 
Wo found the churches in about the same condi- 
tion, very cold. Many churches are only ice- 
houses anyway. If it should be possible for a 
child to be born in one of them, it would freeze 
to death; its mouth would pucker up in twenty- 
four hours until it could not say, "Amen." Many 
preachers are not fire-builders, they are ice-crack- 
ers; they preach in a refrigerator and talk to a 
lot of icicles. They preserve their converts in 
cold storage, that's the way dead things are kept. 
My ! what an awful change it must be for the ice- 
man when he dies. 

Such was the condition of things in Cripple 
Creek, and we did not propose to take our fire and 
warm them over. We rented a big business 
room down in town and went to work with the 
Lord on our own hook. Some of the cold-stor- 
age, church-professing crowd said, "You'll not 
have any one to hear you." Well, bless God! 
they found out that the old-fashioned, pentecos- 
tal, Holy-Ghost Hell fire and brimstone would 
bring the crowds. Thank God! We took our 
little organ and went on the streets and began 



310 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

to sing and shout and we soon had a crowd, and 
we had a red-hot time and a great revival and 
souls got to God and got saved. Hallelujah! 
I say, Amen ! what do you say ? 

After a two weeks' siege we cut loose for 
Hayden, Rout Co., Col., over the Denver & 
Rio Grand Railroad, via Royal Gorge, Leadville, 
and Tennessee Pass. Leaving the railroad at 
Wolcott, we traveled about one hundred miles by 
stage over hills and valleys, mountains and 
streams, through snow storms and deep snow. 
At one time we traveled eighteen miles and saw 
but one little log cabin where an old bachelor 
lived, who spent his time in trapping bears. Hay- 
den is a small village of one hundred, in a very 
rich valley on Bear River. The next nearest 
village is Craig, eighteen miles down the river; 
the next village up the river is Harm's Peak, the 
county-seat, fifty miles. 

The people are not greenhorns, they are East- 
ern people and the most of them in good circum- 
stances. They raise wheat, oats, barley, mostly 
hay and deal principally in cattle and horses. 
There is a fine range in the mountains. They 
brand their cattle and turn them out all together. 
Twice a year they have a round-up ; the ranchmen 
come together. Each man has his brand, and 



More: about the Rockies. jii 

each cowboy has his pony and lariat, the cattle are 
corralled and the cowboys ride among the cattle 
and lasso the calves and such a time of somer- 
saults you never saw, the calf bawling and the 
mother cow following it up, bellowing. The 
calf is dragged up to the fire, the number cried 
out and the hot brand applied. This is great 
fun for the cowboys and ranchmen, but hard on 
the calf. 

I have been amused a great many times, in 
meetings, at similar performances. I have seen 
the noose dropped over the head of some old 
forty-year-old, tobacco-soaked church professor, 
that never had the Lord's fire-brand for a clean 
heart, and as you begin to tighten the string to 
pull him to the branding place, you could see his 
back begin to hump like a broncho, and.such kick- 
ing and frothing of yellow tobacco juice, eyes 
looking like two buckeyes in a bowl of clabber, is 
a spectacle! About nine out of every ten will 
slip the noose and get away from you. 

We are now in the midst of the rounding-up 
season and the cowboys are having a great time. 
Some of them are pretty tough, they wear their 
high-top boots, broad-brim hats, a belt with two 
revolvers, and a knife in it, and a Winchester in 
their hands. Some of them are coming to our 



312 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

meeting at night. It was reported that the saloon- 
keeper had put them up to shoot out our lights. 
But thank God! I was glad to know I carried 
a light they could not shoot out. But they never 
molested us, they were in sympathy with the meet- 
ing, they liked Hell fire and holiness preaching. 
They said, "If there is anything in religion, it 
must be a holy religion." That is better than 
some church people are doing. 

Wild game is in abundance. A man came in 
town one night with nine deer in his wagon. The 
best of it sells at five cents a pound, out in the 
mountains you can get it for nothing. It's a 
shame the way the deer are being killed, thou- 
sands of deer and elk are killed just for their hides 
and horns. A few more years and game will be 
scarce. I have seen horns piled up in door yards 
as big as a brush heap. Yard fences are made 
out of them. There is an abundance of other 
game. The coyotes are so numerous you can 
scarcely sleep at night for their yelling. 

There are many peculiar things in Colorado. 
One thing is everything looks to be so near 
when it is so far. Mountains that look to be about 
five miles away are about fifty miles away. When 
you are going uphill it appears to be going down- 
hill, water looks like it runs uphill. There are 



Mors about ths Rockies. 3.13 

places where there are springs that are as cold as 
ice and in ten feet there is another spring that is 
boiling hot. I heard a man say you could cast 
a hook for a fish in a stream and when you catch 
it, you can turn around and dip it in a boiling 
spring, and cook it; then dip it in a salt spring 
and salt it. That is a fish story, but I have the 
man's word for it. But people can join church 
that easily these days. They can join by telephone, 
send up their picture to be baptized, and when 
they come to die, it will be like this man I read 
of. The parson announced on the church bulle- 
tin at the door that "Brother Jones, the de- 
ceased, had started for Heaven at 9 A. M." 
Some mean boys read it and wrote the following 
under it: "Heaven, 3 P. M. Brother Jones not 
arrived yet; great anxiety/' I suppose when the 
preacher read the obituary at the funeral he would 
say, "The corpse joined our church more than 
forty years ago, and has been a quiet, restful 
member all these years." There are dozens of that 
kind of church folks that can be found anywhere, 
dead forty years before they are laid in their 
coffin. 

Well, I must close. If providence wills, I will 
be at home for the Christmas Convention at 



314 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

Cleveland. Everybody come and let us expect a 
big time. 

Yours in the Mountains for God, 

John T. Hatfieu). 



CHAPTER XL. 

Short Sketches of Some Meetings. 

Back in the old Hoosier State. Up against it 
again. We thought we had it hard enough at 
our last meeting, but we jumped out of the fry- 
ing-pan into the fire, not holy fire by any means. 
At first we thought we were going to have a 
great meeting, but how quickly it dropped out. 
We had seekers, plenty of them, but they were the 
old crowd, nothing new. They sought easy, got 
through easy, and were still easy when we left. 
Some that did not come to the altar said they had 
no need of coming, but from their looks and 
actions they were in cold storage. These people 
claimed to have a Holiness church ; they had the 
church, but we will leave the reader to guess at 
the rest. You can hold up your hand and count 
your fingers and you have the crowd who had the 
appearance of life; they 'could pray, sing, shout, 
testify, exhort, jump, etc., but when the truth 
was preached they would soon be down at the 
altar again as seekers. Oh, they were sanctified, 

315 



316 Thirty-three Years a Live Wire. 

but they had just lost the victory ! To get them 
through right is the proposition that stumps me. 
Oh, they get through! They sing, "I'm going 
through," but did you ever chase a bursted bubble 
and see where it went ? 

In years gone by this church had great power, 
and was on fire for God, and scores of souls 
were saved and sanctified. But now they are like 
broken-down aristocracy, living upon the faded 
splendors of the past, camping at little Ai and 
talking about their big Jericho. They remind 
us of the withered flowers of a last month's fun- 
eral; dry, very dry, as dry as Thompson's colt 
that swam the Mississippi River to get a drink. 

How many can you count ? That depends on 
what you want to know. If it is those who come 
to the altar, we can make a good report, but if 
it is those who get a real, genuine, Holy-Ghost 
experience, then it would take a microscope to 
find them. We don't understand how some peo- 
ple study mathematics, especially the multiplica- 
tion table. We have seen some places where they 
were counted by the hundred, and it would take 
a dozen class-leaders and as many local preachers 
to muster a corporal's guard. You could skim 
the whole crowd and not get enough cream for 
one cup of coffee. They must be color blind; 



Short Sketches of Soms Meetings. 317 

they couldn't tell a dove from a buzzard to save 
their lives. I would be afraid to be out in the 
woods where one of them was hunting — they 
would shoot me for a crow as sure as a gun is 
iron. 

Well, we came to a sudden and an unexpected 
closing of the meeting. The Lord said it was 
enough, we pulled stakes and took cross lots 
through the country and struck a little country 
church. Started the telephones to going and by 
night we had the whole country invited to meet- 
ing. The first night the house was full, there was 
great interest from the beginning and we had a 
great meeting, these people were hungry, they 
appreciated the preaching, and the Lord greatly 
blessed them. 



The: End. 



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